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.

It's Alive?

On Saturday night I found myself at a screening of a very old, and very wonderful film: The Curse of Frankenstein, starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. This screening happened to be part of a “Hammer Festival”, organised in celebration of the successful revival of the studio, which began in February with the release of The Woman in Black. The event, which included a discussion and Q&A session with Mark Gatiss and Jonathon Rigby (who collaborated on a History of Horror series back in 2010), took place at the Phoenix independent cinema in Leicester - a wonderful place that I'd never heard of prior to booking my tickets (I see they have a sci-fi fest coming up soon too! :D).

For me, some of the most interesting comments of the evening were the relatively off-topic remarks given in response to one audience question. Rather aptly, given the “risen from the grave” theme, the discussion came round to the question of remakes, adaptations and continuations of older films, shows and stories. Mark Gatiss was asked at one point which Hammer horror film he would most like to remake if given the choice, to which he responded, quite reasonably, that he wouldn't. Too much of what we find on television these days, he observed, is covering the same old ground – there's a relative absence of fresh, exciting new material. Much as I'm sure he loves them, he made it quite clear that he'd much rather have created something fully his own than have spent the last few years helping to re-do Sherlock Holmes and revive Doctor Who. The problem is, unfortunately, that even well established and respected writers like Gatiss apparently find it very difficult to get original work commissioned.

Of course it's perfectly believable, and understandable, that this should be the case. TV companies simply don't have money to throw around any more. What with DVDs and downloading (both legal and illegal), hardly anyone really watches television any more, with the possible exceptions of sports and reality shows. If you want news, you can find it on the internet. If you want to watch a good film, you can buy or borrow a blue-ray. If you want to watch a good TV drama, you can stream it online. Where students and young people probably used to be some of the prime consumers of television programmes, having more time to kill, particularly during the day, it's now become relatively unusual to even see a TV set in a student flat or household, since they can get everything they want on their computers much cheaper – so, less money for the BBC. TV advertising, too, now generates a fairly negligible revenue, since we're bombarded constantly by much more attention-grabbing (and rather more irritating) advertising all over virtually every website we visit, often deliberately obscuring the information we're actually looking for so that we have to take note of them whether we like it or not – so no money for ITV et al either. Distinctions in quality between the output of the license-paid BBC and other commercial channels are rapidly disintegrating, as both sides are forced to compete for ratings by showing more and more of the same: the sort of reality talent shows requiring very little thought and aimed at a mass audience, because these are the only things people can't get elsewhere.

Of course, it's rather disheartening for a budding writer to be told just how difficult it is to sell your work, even when, as in Gatiss's case, your reputation precedes you. What all this made me realise as much as anything, however, was just how incredibly lucky I've been so far. Not that I've had any original material commissioned, of course, but my experience of working in television was an encouraging one. I found an environment that fostered creativity, and people who were willing to put their necks out to get me a break – who still are, in fact. People who wanted to pay me to sit and play around with ideas, to give me time to figure things out before I came up with something, even though they didn't know me, and had no clue that I even would come up with something, let alone anything good.

But, I suppose, to have any hope of breaking out of the vicious circle, you have to take a chance: it's short-sighted not to invest in new people, in new work. And I feel desperate now to prove myself an investment, not to let people down – not just for my own sake, but for the sake of whoever comes next as well. And, of course, for the sake of good television. Because if I fail, and if others who are given the same opportunities fail, what are we left with? Piles of long worn-out and homogeneous wreckage, in amidst which the only creative impulse is a Victor Frankenstein, robbing from the graves of formerly glorious series to piece together some uncannily familiar creature which, in the end, is never quite the perfect new species they had hoped for.

On Banks, Bosons, and Getting Your Big Break

Can anyone lend me ten billion quid?

Why d'you look so glum? Was it something I did?

'The Complete Banker' - Neil Hannon

So the breaking news this week is that the bankers have gone and broken everything again. Or rather, we're reassessing the damage that they did when they broke everything before. Although it's old news, it looked for about five seconds like the government might have decided to actually do something about it. Turns out they haven't. No surprises there.

Meanwhile, back in the world of real work for ordinary pay......well, there isn't any, as any new graduate this year will miserably inform you. I recently read this Independent article which gets the facts mostly right, though quite what Ms Heawood's friends' cooker has to do with the price of bananas I'm at rather a loss to explain. My problem with the piece has less to do with her actual advice (“Stop moaning”, which is generally very good advice) and more to do with its disconcertingly cynical tone. It's true that talking about how you expected the world of work to be like Sex and the City isn't likely to win you points with anyone (though again, where she got this material from, I couldn't begin to imagine – S&tC is, or rather was, aimed at women who are now in their thirties and forties, not my generation, who were just kids when it was aired), and it's true that wallowing in your newly realised unemployability is only going to make you feel worse yourself, rather than changing anything. However, there's a whole world of difference between making a legitimate complaint while still trying to find work, and just plain moping around. To go back to my first point, if the government weren't busy spending billions on bailing out banks and giving tax breaks to other big companies, they might actually have a bit of money left to invest in all the young people, many of whom are likely to more than make it back. Here's what Kim Newman has to say on the subject:

When I graduated in 1980, I was able to move to London (well, near London) and live in a bedsit for three years thanks to benefits. Then, after doing a lot of unpaid work while on the dole, I started supporting myself as a freelance writer. Now, most years, I pay more in tax than I received in state hand-outs during that period - and I've covered my student grant many times over too. Under the system David Cameron wants, where those under twenty-five aren't eligible for housing benefits, I'd never have been able to leave my parents' home in Somerset and would have remained unemployed and unemployable to the present day. So, the kind of career I have is now pretty much barred to those without rich parents ... maybe if the Prime Minister just began all his speeches with 'fuck you, poor people' it would end any confusion as to what kind of big society he wants.

If we don't talk about this, then certainly nothing's going to be done about it. Like Ms Heawood's friends, if we don't speak up, we might as well all take to the good life, because the farming practice might well come in handy for the day when the country reverts back to the feudal system. Heawood utterly fails to make the distinction between constructive criticism and the kind of useless cynicism that annoys her which is (somewhat understandably) increasingly taking hold of young people. Funnily enough though, as far as I can see, the latter is much more akin to her own outlook. Heawood's attitude is one of (as my mother would say) “put up and shut up”: basically, we can't win, so we shouldn't even try. Just get used to it, kids!

Received wisdom at the moment seems to be that students just aren't willing to pull their weight, but there are a whole host of general and particular circumstances which are affecting people's chances of finding work, many of which aren't solely to do with the number of jobs available in the country in general. The first is the (apparently surprising, to some people) fact that not everyone lives in London. I'm not going to dispute Londoners' firm belief that the whole world revolves around their precious little city here – I've lived there long enough now to know better, and besides, at the very least it pretty much has been the centre of the universe in the past, and it's still the only place to be if you're young and looking for interesting work. Unfortunately, current London accommodation prices, coupled with David Cameron's decision that under-25s don't deserve any help with housing, means that those of us who don't have parents living in and around the city (i.e. the vast majority of us), simply cannot afford to live in the capital and work unpaid. But nobody wants to pay you if they can get you for free, and this “free labour market” is becoming increasingly competitive. I studied for my degree at a major London university, but as soon as I finished my course, I gave up my flat there. I had to. I have about enough money left in my current account for one month's rent at ordinary London prices (let alone at the skyrocketing Olympic period rates). I could break into my savings (yes reader, I am a student who has managed to save money, so don't let anybody tell you we're all careless spendthrifts), but then I'm left with nothing to fall back on: despite my present situation, as the managers of a very small, seasonal, business, and with my much younger sister still at school, my parents have even less disposable income than I do. Besides which, even the savings I have wouldn't get me very far in London: once you've added up crazy rent prices, crazy transport prices and all the bills, I'd probably manage for about two or three months max. And I may as well give up all hope of ever owning anything or ever being out of debt, ever. It's bleak and alien world for someone with a working class background like mine, where you grow up believing that debt is the devil, and that it's much better to have something you can call your own, however inadequate, than nothing. Renting has always felt frighteningly insecure to me, and not without reason: I have plenty of friends who've been kicked out of their flats by dodgy landlords who ought to be sued. But hey, we're students, we don't matter. And of course, Grant Shapps says it's unnecessary to introduce stricter regulations for private landlords, and Mr Shapps is an honourable man....

Fundamentally, I'm not opposed to the idea of internships or, as we used to more honestly call them back in the day, work experience placements (giving flashy names to rubbish things just to make them seem more desirable is something that really irks me). I completed a fantastic one myself last summer with the BBC, which ended in real paid work for me. Unfortunately, I stopped working there once my third year of study started. Part of me is already starting to feel this was a mistake, and I'm sure many other people in my situation would think so too. But I never wanted to work while I was studying, and I certainly didn't want to give up on my degree half way through it, even if it was an arts degree (which, incidentally, haven't always been useless, as any cursory glance at the academic histories of our MPs and leaders will show you). Going to university was, for me, a major investment, so I wanted to work hard at it and make it count for something. It paid off – I came out with a first. I'm still not convinced, however, that this makes me any more employable than the next person with a 2.1 or a 2.2 or even a third, since all us students are lazy and self-important, right? The fact that I've already done one unpaid placement with the BBC recently means that I cannot do another one until a full twelve months is up. And really, that's as it should be. This is surely an anti-exploitation rule. I shouldn't have to work unpaid again, and I can't really afford to, but if I don't manage to more or less get my old job back, I will probably have to in order to open up my options.

Still, I tend to look on the bright side of things. As long as I can stay at home and not have to pay rent, I'm happy to carry on working for nothing with other companies if needs be. And there are plenty of people out there who just don't have that luxury. A friend of mine made the decision aged 16 to stay behind when her family moved away, and, without going into details, if she returned to them now, she'd be in extreme danger. But of course, she's not entitled to any help with housing, because David Cameron thinks she should still be living with her parents, and David Cameron is an honourable man.... Fortunately for her, she's managed to find a live-in job, but if she hadn't, I really don't know what she'd do.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'd say that all this put together constitutes legitimate cause for complaint, and depending on how you go about it, raising your voice about it can be a lot more worthwhile than arbitrary and ineffective moaning. That said, of all the people that I know, the friend I mentioned above is perhaps the least likely person in the world to openly complain about anything. In any case, I think Ms Heawood is wrong. We shouldn't stop moaning. We should just be careful about how we go about it.

In other, much more exciting news, CERN has announced that it has finally discovered the all-elusive Higgs Boson, four years after the completion of the LHC in Geneva (or fourteen years since work on the machine began). It's a terrifically exciting time for all of us (including those who went on to become arts students) who got caught up in the big hoo-hah the first time the machine got switched on. I suppose this is probably going to be one of those things that ages us fairly soon. Ehy, when ah were a sixth-former.... .Man, they won't even have sixth-form soon, will they? Well anyway, when I was in sixth form, we had celebratory cake and LHC t-shirts and all sorts. Well, to be fair, we did have celebratory cake for just about everything, even when there wasn't anything better to celebrate than that our English teacher let us bring cake into lessons. My little brother who's a physicist has been very annoyed that all the banking stuff has completely taken over the news, relegating such a significant scientific breakthrough to relative obscurity. While beating the banking scandals may well be classed as more in the public interest than finding out cool stuff about particles, I really can't help but agree with him. Let's have a good news story for once, shall we? So many millions were invested in the banks and look what happened. Meanwhile, so many millions were invested in CERN and the LHC project that we should all be looking up and taking notice now it's coming to fruition. It's great that this has happened, isn't it? It's hardly any wonder that so few people do amazing things when they've always got so little recognition for it. What with the sort of mind-numbing crud people sit down to watch on television these days, you're more likely to get rich and famous (or at least to get a bit of cash on the back of being slightly famous) by behaving like a complete ass than for doing something worthwhile. I almost don't blame the bankers for thinking it's acceptable to be stupid and reckless.

Here's an idea: maybe if we stopped giving all our time and money and attention to the idiots who are going to waste it, we could start taking heed of all the really, truly wonderful things that human beings are capable of. We might end up happier. We might end up more confident and ambitious. Who knows, we might even manage to stop the tide of cynicism that's turning us into a nation of Neil from the Young Oneseseses. I for one say we can do better than this. There is surely a point at which every person who goes on to do something great realises that the “great” men and women who went before them were really just ordinary people like them. By the same token, if the people you look up to are all morons, you're not going to have a whole lot of faith in your own power to succeed. Let's set the bar higher. I haven't given up yet, and neither should you.

Finally, just in case you hadn't already guessed, I'd like to add that I honestly don't think there's any shame in doing an arts degree. Have some more words of wisdom from Mr Newman:

I heard Sir Christopher Frayling on Radio 4 this morning making the valid point that the arts/culture/design/music/whatever sector is only a percentage point or so less lucrative to the UK economy than the financial/banking one. Yet the government bends over backwards to placate and protect 'the City' while going out of its way not to support, encourage or foster us poncy wasters whose doodles and scribbles and twangings earn about the same amount. I don't know any potters who bank in the Channel Islands to avoid tax and can't think of any musicians who've brought about a recession.

Proud to be a literature graduate. (y)

A Hollow Take

Before watching part one of The Hollow Crown, the BBC's adaptation of Richard II aired on Saturday night, I was already prepared for some of the themes that this version of the play would be touching on. Without having watched it myself, I was given the gist of a conversation about the The Hollow Crown series which took place on The Review Show, broadcast the night before. Rather to my surprise, I was told that Mark Thomas was one of the guests on the show. I wouldn't have thought he'd have much patience with a programme like The Review Show (I know I don't - I had to skip through most of it when I had a look myself), but there he was. Now, I like Mark Thomas, but in this instance, I didn't necessarily agree with what I heard. As I understood it, he'd been arguing that Rupert Goold's “take” on the play was an unnecessary addition, and asking why directors couldn't just use what was already there in the play text. Fundamentally, I don't have any problem with having a “take” something (see my next review of the RSC's current Julius Caesar). In fact, I'd go so far as to say it can be crucial. If you're going to redo something as already overdone as a Shakespeare play, you've got to have a reason, right? You need to bring something to the story that will make it worth watching, make it stand out from countless alternative versions. So I still sat down on Saturday night to watch the film with a completely open mind. What I knew hadn't influenced my judgement. Having now watched both The Review Show and Richard II, however, I can say with some certainty that Mark Thomas was entirely right. On The Review Show, Kerry Shale argues that “you've got to have a take”. True enough, but it has to be something that adds to the play, enhances the story and makes it resonate in certain ways with the audience. Goold's dubious addition of a slightly bizarre homoerotic subtext to Richard II was, quite categorically, not that something.

Before I go any further, I'd like to point out here that reading Shakespeare, or indeed any text, with an eye for queer or alternative sexuality is not something that I'm against in general. Sometimes it can be fruitful. For an example, it's worked so well with Romeo and Juliet that most people these days seem to have forgotten that Shakespeare never actually wrote Mercutio as gay. This is fine (though it would be nice now and then to see a version which doesn't depict him as such, just for the sake of balance). With Richard II, though, this was an unhelpful addition which detracted from the main point of the play, transforming what was originally a well balanced, poignant and potentially still relevant piece of writing about power, recklessness and the problems innate in the political system, into the story of a one-sided struggle on the part of a slightly bewildered, wouldn't-be king and the martrydom of a weirdly masochistic reincarnation of, at once, Christ, St. Sebastian, and Lawrence of Arabia.

Let's be very clear: if there's one thing that Richard II is very definitely not about, it's self-sacrifice. On the contrary, Shakespeare goes to great lengths to show us just how self-serving, in their different ways, his principal characters are. It's already been said somewhere on Twitter that this version of the play is great apart from having missed out all the politics of the original, and I think that's a fair assessment. As I watched, I became increasingly annoyed at the almost wilful inattention to the subtleties of Shakespeare's political analysis. This film has moved, I feel, drastically away from its source text, a play which is about the deposition of immaturity, arrogance and naïve belief in the divine right to rule in favour of something smoother and more calculating, but nevertheless more competent – a kind of real politik, as Mark Thomas put it. Instead, we have a Henry who is fiercely loyal, if proud, who breaks his banishment only to reclaim the power and goods he has been robbed and cheated out of by the king. This is a Henry who is in no way crafty enough to attempt to take over the kingdom, and accordingly, his accession just “happens” by accident. When Henry finally reaches and makes his petition to the king, Richard, to his utter astonishment, not only grants his request, but also almost immediately proceeds to offer up the whole kingdom, entirely unprovoked and unpersuaded.

I still can't really tell if the director consciously intended to present Richard as quite so ridiculous and unsympathetic as he came across. My belief, based on all the saintly and Christ-like imagery attached to the character throughout, is that it probably was not. Nonetheless, as far as I was concerned, all that this imagery served to do was to suggest that Richard was suffering from a kind of Messiah complex, and I found it very unclear why this should be so. In all honesty, I think by this point I was just about as baffled as poor old Henry, who apparently hadn't a clue what had just happened or what on earth he was supposed to do next. In fairness to Goold's reading, Shakespeare undoubtedly presents Richard as highly delusional. For much of the play, Richard's silly, youthful little head is full of his supposed omnipotence, the almost magical power surrounding kings, rendering them uniquely infallible. More than anything else, in my opinion, the play is the story of Richard growing up, awakening to the fact that he is, after all, human, and this goes to the very essence of what his “hollow crown” line is all about. At the point at which he hands over the crown, he has learned the lesson of his own vulnerability. The crown (or his role as king) has no power to protect him when his kingdom turns against him. Not only has he failed to gather the man-power to fight against his rival's troops, he is also completely lacking in the intelligence, eloquence and quick wit needed to win people over with words. Talking his way out of a sticky situation is a skill that he has never learned, because he has never felt the need to, happily relying on his subjects' ingrained reverence for their “rightful” king with not an inkling of the precarious and dependent position this puts him in.

Though not necessarily a dislikeable character, Henry is Richard's polar opposite in this. Despite being a banished man, he manages to rally together support from a whole host of noblemen with talk of justice and the false promise that he has no intention of deposing the king. Of course then when he breaks this promise, no one really minds, because he has already succeeded in making everybody like him. The scene in which Henry's ruthless, calculating nature is typically made most clear is in the execution of Richard's remaining supporters, under the pretence that they have led the poor, trusting, unknowing king astray. Usually, it's quite clear that this is a ruse: Henry needs to make sure that no one will stand in the way of his path to the crown, so he invents an excuse to dispose of his opponents while still managing to appear like he has the king's best interests at heart. Unfortunately, the context of this adaptation lends an ulterior meaning to the accusations. The sometimes muted, sometimes rather heavy-handed homoerotic subtext seems to be stretched to the point of implying that these men are Richard's (not so) secret lovers. More problematic than this, however, is the fact that Goold clearly takes Harry at his own word. This means that even as he butchers innocent men, we still seem to be encouraged to sympathise with him.

The gay subtext crops up again uncomfortably at another important moment that really ought to be poignant, but in this case isn't. On his way to the Tower, Richard encounters his wife. Usually, this is Richard's chance to demonstrate a bit of humanity, and the audience's chance to really, truly feel for him. Though the rest of the play has shown him up as petulant, selfish and careless, at this point we clearly see his love for another person, and it is touching. It is a moment full of remorse and regret, a recognition of the wider repercussions of his own failure to be a good king. In The Hollow Crown, however, it is (perhaps aptly) a rather hollow and anti-climactic scene. Richard is cold and unfeeling with his wife, just as he has been cold and unfeeling throughout. He can't love her, apparently, because he doesn't swing that way.

I imagine the excuse for this “take” on the play is Richard's vanity, his love of fashion and excess and his melodramatic tendencies. Perhaps it also partly stems from his weakness and passivity in comparison with other more “manly”, soldierly men. I have two major problems with this. The first is simply the blatant disregard of historical context. Anyone who has any sense of the look and feel of the period will know that Shakespeare lived in the golden age of the peacock. Any man who could afford it was expected to dress richly and dramatically, to ornately and often gaudily adorn both his residence and his person. Attention to fashion and costly ornamentation were not unusual traits in men. This was so much the case that Queen Elizabeth I, anxious about the newly wealthy merchant classes becoming confused with real nobility, felt the need to draw up an incredibly detailed statute concerning what particular classes of people could and couldn't wear. Yes, that's right. People so badly wanted to dress up, often beyond their means, that it was made (at least in some cases) illegal. Though Richard II is set some time earlier, Richard's interests and expenditures would certainly not have been looked upon as unusual. My second problem, from a more modern point of view, is that such a reading is potentially offensive to actual homosexuals. You can't just deduce that, because a guy likes dressing up fancy and is generally passive rather than aggressive, he must be gay. I mean, come on. We're past that, aren't we? That's logic about as flawed and immature as Richard's own.

Quite apart from all that though, I actually really, really enjoyed the film. The acting was phenomenal. Never mind Shakespearean adaptations – there are few TV productions of anything that I've seen where every single actor involved does such a fantastic job. The one performance I would say I had some issues with was actually the one I least expected to find problematic. To be completely fair though, I don't really think it was the actor's fault. I usually find Ben Whishaw the most compelling thing about anything he's in (and that's really saying something when you've been in all-round fabulous, star-studded productions like The Hour), generally because he's doing the exact opposite of what he did in Richard II. What Whishaw does magnificently and almost, it seems, instinctively, is to powerfully convey a sense of interiority. When you watch him, you feel like there's a whole world of stuff going on inside his head that you don't know about. It's a skill that some actors never achieve in their whole lifetimes, let alone in relative youth, and it's always what really brings his characters to life. It makes them three-dimensional, intelligent, individual. Funnily enough, as soon as I heard that he was playing Richard II, I was thrilled: I couldn't imagine anyone more perfect for the role. But unfortunately, the camp, melodramatic, stagey style he adopted in The Hollow Crown was a pretty far cry from his usual performances, and the only reason for this that I could see was that something went badly wrong with the direction. Whishaw probably made the best of the interpretation of the character he had to work with, which wasn't a very good one. He still had some stand-out moments in the film, but overall, it was undeniable that, just like his character, he was utterly outstripped by Rory Kinnear, whose performance as Henry was dazzling from start to finish. Elsewhere, Patrick Stewart was, as usual, spectacular. More broadly, I couldn't pick out any serious faults with a single member of the cast.

I'd have to be fair to everyone involved: despite the director having, I think, completely missed the point of the story, I think this is a fantastic production and well worth a watch, if you haven't seen it already. The whole thing looked fantastic and, in Rupert Goold's defence, he did come up with some brilliantly innovative ways of livening up scenes with lots of standing around and talking – I'm thinking particularly of the handing over of the crown here. For all my problems with it, it's slick, beautiful and compelling, and certainly more than enough to make me excited about this weekend's instalment. Expect to hear more from me on that.

A Contentious Theory and a Confession

This is my first blog post in a long time for all the usual reasons of having had some serious studying/actual real work to do. Nevertheless, without further ado, I'm jumping straight into this one. It's a long one but, I think, an important one. This is something that's been bothering me for a while now, as I prepare to re-enter the world of work.

Over the last few weeks I've become abnormally aware of the political bent of many of my online posts, especially on facebook. From Feminist Frequency videos to shares from the “We Don't Give A Shit About the London 2012 Olympics” page, even the most cursory glance across my wall (or “timeline”, as I still have to get used to calling it) would give any viewer a fairly good indication of the sort of person I am, where I stand on a number of significant issues, and which ones I think are most pressing. As such, I can easily see why a number of employers these days are keen to take sneaky looks at their potential employees' facebook profiles. Although I think I'm reasonably on top of my facebook privacy settings where strangers are concerned, I do still have ex-colleagues/bosses (who have offered to distribute my CV and help me look for work now) added as facebook friends, which means they can see everything I post.

How much this matters is questionable. Up until now, I've never really felt like I had anything to hide. But just the other day, a friend told me a story about one of his colleagues who's had half the senior management team on her back merely for posting a status about a decision taken by her boss. No negative comment was made, mind – as I understand it, she simply told some other people about a decision that everyone else was going to find out about shortly anyway. The boss didn't know this, of course, but the fact she assumed guilt as a default as soon as she heard about it is extremely troubling.

This paranoia, silly as it all is, is now starting to set in with me. While I stand by everything I've posted online, and will speak my mind honestly on any issue if questioned about it, I do wonder if some of the things I'm now fairly publicly associated with might throw my chances somewhat with certain employers. Lots of the things I've posted about wouldn't be a problem, I'm sure: nobody wants to see kids starving or being forced into wars, right? Others, meanwhile, might be seen as more controversial. The above-mentioned anti-Olympics protest pages are a case in point. After all, when jokes by ordinary mums or comments from elderly pensioners are leading to police warnings and even official visits to sheltered accommodation, who knows what might come of open protest by an idealistic, vocal and actually potentially threatening young student?

But it's not just my published thoughts on the nationwide panic and oppressive censorship accompanying a major global event like the Olympics that's bothering me. Even things that might, by comparison, be considered rather trivial (I'm now a “Top Commenter” on The Guardian on facebook, it seems), have in some cases provoked, or otherwise have the potential to provoke, angry and hostile responses from ordinary readers. My views on things like the feminism, trade laws and the capitalist system have met with a backlash even from some of the people I've considered friends. Still, I've always thought of such debate as healthy and constructive. Every now and then I need to be made to question myself because it helps me to formulate and express my own arguments more effectively, and to better understand what I actually believe in and why. So why the sudden change of tune?

Well, I'm increasingly beginning to wonder that if my thoughts and posts can incite such strong reactions in my contemporaries, classmates, and even in complete strangers, how much more so could they in people with real power and authority over me? How much more, for example, in prospective employers? Perhaps the fear is a little excessive, but given the circumstances, it's far from unfounded. Undeniably, it is becoming increasingly common practice to look people up online if you want to know more about them – so much so, that even if you didn't initially intend to find their personal blogs or social networking pages, chances are you'll stumble across them anyway.

What I'm finding more worrying than any particular thing that I've said, repeated or linked to, however, is the sheer volume of posts I make, both on facebook and elsewhere, of a political and/or philosophical nature. This, at least as much as the nature of any of the posts, gives a certain idea of me as a person. If you wanted to be kind, you might say that it seems that I care too much about too many things. If you wanted to be less kind, you might say that I come across as naïve and opinionated. There, you begin to understand my problem. It's not so much what I say, as how much and how strongly I say it.

After thinking on this for some time today, however, I came to a conclusion which I really, really hope is not too self-justificatory, which is that cynicism is something of a privilege. I can, I think, verify this outside of myself. It's a rather tired cliché we see in stories that those who have suffered become hardened, embittered and indifferent, but I've honestly yet to see any real evidence for this. What you often find in reality is that in damaged and impoverished communities, people are continually striving for better. Often, this means stronger communal ties, people working together and looking after each other because no one else will. It can also mean a political streak unusual for the general demographic that they ought to fit into. However misguided or well-thought out, however correct or incorrect in particular cases, those at the bottom of the heap tend to have the strongest sense of justice (so much so that they'll sometimes take it upon themselves to carry it out, though this I wouldn't generally advocate). The reason for this is that the urge for improvement is something they (we) simply can't afford not possess. We have to believe in whatever little power we might have to change things, precisely because we have so little of it. We need to believe that even if things don't work out for us, they can at least be better for our children.

One of the most political and idealistic places I know is the mining village that I grew up in. During the 80s, just before we moved in there, it saw some of the fiercest strike action of the era. So strong were people's opinions on the issue of the pit closure and the ensuing strike that, for years after the battle was lost, tensions continued to run high. Now, decades later, even as old wounds have healed, the place still has a thriving political life. If a politician comes to speak in the village community centre, people will not only go to listen, but they will bring an opinion with them. And, quite frankly, it has been fairly unusual for politicians to bother all that much round there, probably because they well know that it's somewhere where they can have little hope of shaking people's views. And this in a place where no one is wealthy, and almost no one has had the benefit of a university education.

Meanwhile, if you can afford to live comfortably, it's easy not to care as much. Or, to be more fair to people, it's easy to swallow the lie that you're powerless, that nothing that you do can make any difference. That is one kind of cynicism. The worse kind comes from a higher level where those with all the power and money, who know that they really can make a difference, are able to use the misconception of the middle classes as a weapon. Cynicism is, in short, the refuge of the upper echelons of society, a highly effective defence mechanism used to deflect the threat of idealism from lower down the hierarchy. If they tell us often enough that nothing can be done, then enough people will start to believe them for it to become true.

These days, when our minds are so incessantly and insidiously invaded through media rule, I think it's absolutely crucial that we try to remain critical of the things we're told. We have to make our own minds up, and be honest about what we think because, even if we're wrong, the very presence of an alternative opinion can enable others to think more freely and productively. And, for all its many and massive problems, the internet is a relatively democratic place: each dissenting voice has as much chance to count for something as every conformist one. The truth that no one wants you to know is that there is nothing either possible nor impossible but thinking makes it so, and if we all actually believed that, we'd recognise the importance of speaking out. Of course there are degrees of potential influence, but no one is completely powerless, which is precisely why I'm posting this, and why, whenever I think that it's necessary and appropriate, I will continue to speak (or, as the situation demands, type) my mind elsewhere, whatever the consequences of this are for me. And while I'm on the subject of speaking out, I'd like to give a shout out to Anita Sarkeesian, who recently inspired me by the way she handled a barrage of abuse, hurled at her purely for speaking her mind. Or rather, for threatening to. Numerous commenters launched their mindless personal attacks on her before she'd actually made her planned video series, and so before they could possibly know what it was that she planned to say. Far from being intimidated, however, it seems to have made her more determined. She's going ahead with the project, regardless, and has as a result gained massive support for her work.

But back to the topic at hand. Cynicism is a privilege that I can't afford, and one that many, many other people can afford even less. That's a contentious theory, perhaps, but maybe that's what makes it an important one. Which leads me to my confession. I am an idealist. I may even be opinionated (though, I hope, not in the ram-it-down-your-throat way). And I believe that's no bad thing. 

There's something about Lily

Is it just me, or does virtually every bloke in the Harry Potter films have a slightly creepy - and slightly morbid - obsession with the mother of the Boy Who Lived? Far more universally adored than Harry himself, she is continually dragged back from the dead into discussions by most, if not all, of the male characters who knew her at school. In fact, by the time we reach The Deathly Hallows, "You have your mother's eyes" has, become something of a refrain throughout the series, to the point where Remus Lupin is able to recognise Harry from his "mother's eyes" alone, and Harry himself wearily finishes off the adoring sentiments of his mother's many fans, including both her teachers and her fellow students:

"You're eyes, they're..."

"My mother's. Yeah, I know."

I'm not sure if this eyes thing featured so prominently in the books. Perhaps it's just more noticeable in the films because of the compressed time frame. In any case, the ironic thing is that after they've all banged on about it for seven years, it turns out that Harry's eyes aren't actually his mother's at all - not even metaphorically. In the eighth film, we finally get a glimpse, via the pensieve, of the young Lily who, at least according to Snape's memories, has big, brown eyes. In fact, it would have been pretty difficult to find an actress with a pair of eyes more different to Daniel Radcliffe's. At the very least they could have coloured them digitally.

Other than that, however, David Yates has once again done a fantastic job. The last two films have, I think, far outshone their predecessors (much as I enjoyed them all), and I think that more than anything this is down to good direction. Neither of The Deathly Hallows films have demonstrated any reluctance to pick up on, and even develop further, the much darker and slightly political resonances of the later novels. The Ministry of Magic in Part 1 was even slightly Orwellian. And yet they've still managed to maintain the sense of magic and wonder and the optimistic spirit that first captured my ten-year-old heart.

I'm not one to geek out about minor changes or to be scary and fangirly. I'll admit to loving the Harry Potter books, but not uncritically, and not without an awareness that Rowling couldn't possibly have had any idea where she was going the series when she started writing the Philosopher's Stone, other than, of course, that the series would have to end in a big showdown between Harry and Lord Voldemort (to quote Harry in the most recent film, "Let's finish this how we started it, Tom - together"). Nevertheless, her style does pick up and accrue more depth as she goes along, which worked quite nicely for people of my generation, who grew up along with Harry and his friends. The slightly two-dimensional, archetypal figures from the first couple of books gradually develop into more complex characters, with touching - and sometimes disturbing - backstories. As I suspect is the case with most grown-up "fans", if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms, my favourite characters are now easily Snape and Dumbledore, both of whom undergo quite a dramatic process of revelation and reassessment in the later stories. Far from having always been the twinkly old Merlin we've grown to love, we learn, along with Harry, and much to his dismay, that Dumbledore's past is as shady as midnight in Knockturn Alley, and his offences seem to far outweigh the mistakes made by the hard-done-by, lovesick and embittered potions master. We begin to get the sense - though things are never made wholly explicit - that Dumbledore's identification with the young Tom Riddle probably went further than he'd like to admit. Though in Harry he recognises similar power, and similarly headstrong characteristics, we feel that he really means it when he speaks to his protégé as if he were the better wizard - by virtue of being the better man. Conversely, Snape reveals his hidden depths in the form of love and compassion, having suffered for love of Lily, and then put his life on the line for the sake of his rival's hated offspring. In Yates' film, these complexities emerge, variously obscured and clarified.

Snape's story is heart wrenching: it is the dying man's last tears (he is killed, not instantly with a curse, but slowly and painfully by means of repeated spells and snake attacks), that Harry must take to the pensieve in order to learn the truth. And his dying words? "You have your mother's eyes." Naturally.

Less explicitly, the darkness in Dumbledore is alluded to both at the wedding in the previous film, where an elderly guest forces Harry to question whether or not he knew Dumbledore at all, and again in the latest film, by Aberforth, Albus's brother, whom Hermione, Ron and Harry encounter in Hogsmeade. Aberforth tells them that his brother "sacrificed a great many things" in his pursuit of power, including his own sister - though no further information is either offered or asked for. In the books, of course, this backstory is expanded to explain Dumbledore's fraught love/hate relationship with his friend and rival, the "dark wizard" Grindelwald. And given Rowling's own comments regarding the headmaster's hypothetical sexuality, it's easy to see this relationship as being as suffocatingly intimate as that between Lord Voldemort and Harry, who houses a piece of the former's soul. Despite this, however, we are provided with only a brief overview of this past, almost none of which is supplied by Dumbledore himself, and thus entirely excludes his own opinions and feelings. In cutting down these references to a younger Dumbledore, Yates conveys the same sense of frustration at Dumbledore's deliberate secrecy and concealment.

The use of CGI, too was impressive. Of course, it is undeniable that this film will have had one of the highest budgets in the industry at present. Nevertheless, costly doesn't necessarily mean good, as anyone who's seen a Transformers trailer recently could tell you. What is important is that special effects are used responsibly, rather than excessively. The Gringott's dragon was stunning, and the big finalé felt properly apocalyptic. It's always the small things that count in the end, and one of my favourite things visually was the after-battle debris. Papery flakes of ash floated through the air in one of the most delicate and appropriate uses of 3D I've seen: most of the time, 3D just proves annoying and unnecessary. There, it was glorious. It was such a good ending, that I wished they'd left it there. Of course, they were never going to...

The "19 Years Later" section was, unfortunately, as cheesy, laughable, and gratuitous as anyone who has read the books would have expected. Not one of the all early-twenties actors looked even nearly old enough to have children starting secondary school, despite some hopeless efforts at stubble, paunches, old-farty clothes and, in Ginny's case, an attempt to give her a post-baby chest (bear in mind the actress still looks about thirteen). The worst of the lot was poor Tom Felton, whose "grown-up" Draco seemed to be sporting little more than a ridiculous fake beard as a marker of age. Still...

While I'm on the subject of age, here's a little bit of interesting trivia. Alan Rickman is actually more than ten years older than all of the actors he's supposed to be the same age as, more than fifteen years older than David Thewlis (Lupin) and Geraldine Somerville (Lily). In fact, he's a mere five years younger than the ancient, grandfatherly headmaster, played by Michael Gambon, and considerably older than his brother Aberforth, played by Ciaran Hinds. It just goes to show you that it's not long before those things stop mattering, however silly everyone looked in "19 Years Later".

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).