Lovelives affected by the Old Vic

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Laurence Olivier, Memories, Old Vic, The Royal Hunt of the Sun

 

As part of its celebrations to mark its 200 years of existence the wonderful Old Vic theatre in London’s Waterloo has asked playgoers to send in personal memories of productions there.

Quite independently, two of the ninevoices have done so, Val and Ed. You can find us if you go to https://www.oldvictheatre.com/200/your-stories and scroll down.

The stories do rather give away our ages. More importantly, they show how going to the theatre can affect your love life, for better or worse ….

The Old Vic is still asking for more memories. So send them in – they don’t have to be amorous in content!

Some Shakespearean memories this anniversary day

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Czech, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Midsummer Night's Dream, President Kennedy, Prof Martin Hilský, Richard III, Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night

Back in 1967, with all of an adolescent’s assurance and pomposity I wrote in my A Level English exam that King Lear was too great a play actually to be successfully staged. It makes me cringe somewhat to think of that now, but it must have impressed the examiners as they gave me a good grade. And it is true that I have in fact never seen Lear on stage. I fear that I would not see it done well enough. A couple of years back I tried to get to the Ian McKellen production – surely that would have been top class, I thought – but it was sold out.

Two nights ago I went to a talk by a Professor* who has translated ALL of Shakespeare into Czech, in which he told his spellbound audience how he went about it and what the difficulties and the joys are in that huge task. In it he said that he put Lear among the best plays ever written, by anybody, with its massive themes of folly and loyalty and disloyalty.

It was while my father was driving me home after seeing Richard III at Stratford in November 1963 that we learned of the death of President Kennedy. We turned on the car radio and heard the voice of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, then the Prime Minister, paying tribute to the President. An evening of dramatic deaths became all too real.

I had not thought much of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my teens, thinking that it was all about fairies and with not much happening. But then at college I saw a student production and came out of the theatre feeling that it was so good to be alive. Not many plays have done that – fingers of one hand? – but that was one of them.

Some reservations? In that study of how power corrupts, Measure for Measure, the amazing coincidences that solve the plotlines do grate somewhat: did the Bard lose interest, or run out of time, and just bring in a deus ex machina or two (dei ex machina?) to finish it? And I admit to not actually enjoying The Taming of the Shrew, and to having seen so many Twelfth Nights that I won’t mind if I go to my grave not having seen any more.

But a great King Lear …………?  Yes please.

*Prof. Martin Hilský, of Charles University in Prague, awarded an honorary MBE for his services to literature

Alan Rickman

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Alan Rickman, Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen

Adieu Alan Rickman. As well as his more famous roles let us not forget his fabulously odious Obadiah Slope in the TV Barchester, and his noble Colonel Brandon in the film Sense and Sensibility. The curl of Slope’s lip on its own made me squirm – it could convey insincerity, smarminess, contempt …. Contrast it with the Colonel’s concern for the ill Marianne and his anxiety to be of use – “Give me an occupation, Miss Dashwood, or I shall run mad”, he pleads.

Thanks.

‘And Then There Were None’

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Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, BBC TV, whodunits

I was in the happy position over Christmas, watching the amazing And Then There Were None on BBC TV, to be able to compare stage and TV versions of this classic Christie story. A group of ten strangers (each with a deadly and guilty secret in their past) find themselves cut off on an island, invited by the mysterious and apparently absent Mr U N Owen; they are then serially murdered, in the same sequence as in the nursery rhyme Ten Little Soldier Boys.

A group of us saw the Agatha Christie Theatre Company do this at Tunbridge Wells’ Assembly Hall in October, as part of their ten-months-long nationwide tour. (How well they must have known their words by the end!)   The cast included some names familiar to those of us of, er, more mature years: Paul Nicholas (star of the 1980s sitcom Just Good Friends), Mark Wynter (‘60s pop star, with hits such as Venus in Blue Jeans), and Deborah Grant (John Nettles’ ex-wife way back in Bergerac), to name but three.

The stage version gave us atmosphere and a storm, and the sense of being trapped. Unlike a film it couldn’t show us close-ups of bodies on jagged rocks, or transport us in momentary flashback to the Western Front or the drowning of a boy. But it did have the excitement of live theatre. Our group had a happy outing; I couldn’t remember whodunit, and the ending surprised me just as it had when I’d seen a film version years before. (This may have been the 1974 one with Richard Attenborough, Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer et al – this story does seem to appeal to all-star casts).

One of the motifs of the story is that there is on display in the house a group of ten toy soldiers. After each death the remaining characters discover that one of these has disappeared. That is easily effected in a film, but how did it happen on stage? In the interval I asked a fellow member of the audience, and he told me he’d seen one of the actors (one who was killed shortly afterwards) surreptitiously put one in his pocket. Maybe whichever cast member was nearest the toys at the time had the job of secreting one.

In our family we’re still enthusing about the TV version, shown on Boxing Day and the two successive nights in one-hour chunks. Wow! The atmosphere, the tension, the menace – and the absence of the semi-humorous tone you often get in Christie films – more, more! One by one the cast are killed, and they know it and can see it coming, and they fear each other. No supersleuth is there to explain the complexities of what is happening and to unmask the villain.  They just get killed, all ten …

I can see that some folk will have found too long the ominous pauses, but not us. To see Toby Stephens, Charles Dance, Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson and the rest put on their turns was just right for the dark evenings after Christmas when the festive supplies of food and drink need to be finished off.   I can’t see it myself, but the female half of our viewership were also much taken with Aidan Turner’s torso. Once displayed, why it then had to reappear quite so often I don’t know.   Yes, you guessed it – this was the role Oliver Reed played in the 1974 film: I can’t remember whether he kept showing us his chest.

Knowing who did it didn’t spoil my pleasure – indeed, it was fascinating to see the story unfold with that knowledge. What was difficult was not letting anything slip that would give the game away to my fellow viewers. Reader, I managed it.

The Twittersphere raved about the production – and the aforesaid torso was the detail most mentioned in that raving.

My favourite tweet was “They’ve really upped the stakes in the latest series of Big Brother.”

I don’t know why the BBC changed the skeleton in the policeman’s cupboard. In the play (and, I think, the original book) he has been bribed and has committed perjury, resulting in an innocent man being hanged. On TV he has instead kicked a young gay man to death in a police cell. One can only speculate why this change was made. 

Sometime I must read the novel to see how the Queen of Crime herself imagined the story. And to find out how it was that Mr U N Owen came to know all these terrible secrets.

I’ve heard it muttered somewhere that next year we may get Witness for the Prosecution (which I also saw the Agatha Christie Theatre Company do this at the Assembly Hall a few years ago). Bring it on!

 

Year of the Fat Knight – The Falstaff Diaries

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diary, Falstaff, Fat, Shakespeare, Sir Antony Sher

A few weeks ago Radio 4 serialised Sir Antony Sher reading extracts of Year of the Fat Knight – The Falstaff Diaries, published earlier this year. This is Antony Sher’s diary account of how he came to play Falstaff for the RSC: how he overcame initial doubts to accept the role, then how he prepared for it, and finally its opening in Stratford. It’s a most interesting account of how a leading actor sets about taking on such a part.

It’s notable too for his enormous appreciation of Shakespeare’s greatness. The book is illustrated by several of the author’s own drawings and paintings.

We see how he struggles to see how to play Falstaff. We read how he sets about learning his lines (not easy, but sheer hard work by the sound if it), and the slog, fun and, yes, drama of rehearsals. We share in the tension and exhilaration of the first night.

Passages that I particularly enjoyed relate his experiences filming The Hobbit in New Zealand; his emotions during a private tour of Westminster Abbey; the discovery among a pile of old rehearsal props of a crutch he had used many years before when playing Richard III; a description of what it’s like backstage during a performance at Stratford; some reflections on why some of the great actors of the past haven’t taken on the role of Falstaff; and the fireworks marking Shakespeare’s 450^th birthday at Stratford, during the plays’ run.

It’s a fascinating glimpse into the world of top-quality theatre. Published by Nick Hern Books Ltd  ISBN 978 1 84842 461 2 RRP £16-99