A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Weds 7th February

The conceit in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that the spirit world can interfere in, and with, the human. What was probably not imagined is that those spirits can also interfere in the dramatic world. And so, in the first scene involving the travelling players, a large piece of scenery (a door) begins to travel very slowly across the stage. We wonder if this could be part of a show, already getting plaudits for its magical special effects, until a stage hand pursues it and returns it whence it came. The cast cover with genuinely funny ad libs and Mathew Baynton (Bottom) repeats the last line before the interruption.

MSND is meant to be chaotic. It lends itself superbly to mixed settings and so we enjoy a bit of Bollywood, synth pop, a feisty Scottish lass and some laddish mods (moddish lads?), trapdoors, ladders and proper magic.

Some of that magic is beguiling with the minor spirits being seen only as lights. Invisible hoists and unexpected trapdoors provide the height. A very deep, bare stage the depth.

The comedy is funny, the effects effective and the time passes quickly in the company of a good cast and crew. More like this please.

Julius Caesar RSC Saturday 8th April 2023

This is to theatre what Penn and Teller are to magic. We are shown the working. We start as if watching the warm up exercises of a rehearsal and then, cast dressed in ordinary clothes, they breathe out a historical drama.

Gender is fluid. Disability is normal and included. The musical and FX director appears on small screens. That music is brooding industrial ambient with spells of louder noise and rarer tuneful noise. Occasionally a guitarist, trombonist and vocalist climb onto the black obelisk upstage (pictured). A smoke machine is used. Ides and portents are personalised. Blood is black (but sometimes actor’s shadows have a red tinge). After the stabbing a two minute countdown on big screen tells us how long JC will spend dying. Later the same counter is used for the interval. Back projection on that screen is full of incomplete images, at one point showing us bits of Caesar’s body from strange angles and extreme close-up. I called to mind the opening credits of Se7en. Other images are brooding but also occasionally pastoral.

In part two colour, until then only sported by the country-accented narrator, is used in the place of the dead, the bodies stacking up in a pen like discarded chess pieces, no longer wearing black and white. Occasionally they haunt.

That black blood. It stains the white stage, despite stage-hands on a fervent interval cleaning regime, and the cast. All are infected like in the old TV infomercial about germs. Power corrupts all around it. In the old evangelical sermon on sin, it spoils. It spreads. It stains. Everyone has black blood on their hands and clothes by the end.

And the murder? Step by step we are drawn into the plot. If Caesar is as they say he is he has to go. No other way out. Except the Caesar we have been watching isn’t like that. Not dictatorial. The asides say he refuses the trappings of power.

I did this play at school over 50 years ago. I’d never been back, the class read-round spoiling it for ever. Well, not quite ever. Thanks RSC.

Other reviews (linked after) will have more to say about the acting, which I'll leave to them. In any event the regular actors were not all available for the show we saw and my increasing deafness did the cast no favours.

This is the RSC debut by Director Atri Banerjee. Some people have buried this woke Shakespeare. I praise it. More please.

Links:

RSC web-site

Guardian Review

Warwickshire World Review

Last Week

I have such a collection of random thoughts knocking about in my head after last week that this will be a bit more like a journal entry.

One of the reasons it is said that the English are such a creative bunch is that we need to respond to a huge range of climatic conditions. When we get several centimetres of snow we are often mocked because the infrastructure can't cope but if the last snow and extreme cold was six years ago not many people can remember where they put their snow-clearing equipment. I think we do pretty well. Obviously the person who thought long boiler condenser pipes to the outside world were a good idea will eventually be dealt with harshly, but it's not too big a demand on your life to pour a kettle of hot water over a cold pipe every couple of hours for a day or so.

I spent a bit of extra time path-clearing and preparing some musical worship because my worship leader was trapped in Portugal. But I had two meetings postponed. Swings and roundabouts.

Chatting to someone in church yesterday about the fact that I had become the musician he invented a concept of 'emergency gifting'. I like that. I don't often play keys and lead musical worship at Trendlewood Church because others can do that. Likewise members of the church who teach often choose not to do that on a Sunday as well (but will in an emergency). Some of our IT experts tend not to become our laptop/projector operators (but will step in). What is your emergency gift?

I advise all clergy not to have emergency gifts of knowing how the heating system works or running the tech desk. Have some areas of ministry where you deliberately choose to be ignorant and cannot possibly help.

Houseparty talk scheme

We are preaching a series through Lent on sin and forgiveness. Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak about the sin at the heart of King David's reign - his adultery with Bathsheba and the arranged murder of her husband. The sermon lent (excuse me) itself to the pattern of a houseparty talk from way back:

• Sin spoils
• Sin spreads
• Sin separates

I asked for a show of hands as to how many people had heard this talk before. Out of 50 adults the score was 4 (including me). It prompted me to deliver the talk with a feeling of freshness because it was new to the congregation. In a post-service review conversation a number of us noted that the pattern of CYFA (Church Youth Fellowships' Association) houseparty talks might be due a revisit in our church.

One of the things I find valuable in keeping my sanity is to have tickets for something coming up. The tragedy of cultural imprecision means that there can be barren months when I don't want to do anything and then several gigs at once.

And so it came to pass that on Saturday night we enjoyed an excellent Tobacco Factory Macbeth. A sombre ambient-industrial soundtrack and strobe lighting during the ghostly scenes added to the atmosphere. The floor of the performance area was covered in pieces of chopped up black rubber (car tyres?) to a depth of about a foot. The cast used this to bury and discover props. Brilliant, brooding and bloody.

Juxtaposed with Reginald D Hunter the next day made for an interesting weekend. Those who speak in public seeking advanced delivery tips should go to as much stand-up as they can. I joked on the journey that the mileage should really be paid for by the diocesan training budget. I still think so. Reg's use of pause was awesome. It is a terrible risk to use pause if you are a stand-up in the environment of possible heckle. He must have had so much confidence in his ability to deal with such, although none happened. We enjoyed the pauses and waited for the punch-lines. I love the Everyman at Cheltenham but it was designed in the days when people were shorter. My limbs will unfold by tomorrow lunchtime I'm sure. Honourable mention to Wild Beer at Jessop House for services to pre-theatre food and drink.

Gigs coming up include Field Music and Calexico and then a debate evening at the Bath Festival.

Tonight I take my role of Assistant Rural Dean and Acting Dean to Portishead enhanced Deanery Synod with the Bishop of Bath and Wells. That makes the last three nights Tragedy, Comedy and Deanery. Good afternoon.

Curious Incidents

Mark Haddon's novel 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time' was a highly original piece of writing. The unreliable narrator has been an interesting literary device for many years. Haddon's narrator was a teenage boy, Christopher, with Asperger's Syndrome. Not unreliable but one who saw the world very differently to most of us.

Adapting the story for the stage has led to this current tour of a remarkable piece of physical theatre, cutting edge technology and amazing props on a minimalist set.

Using the premise that a teacher has spent her time with Christopher persuading him to turn his journal into a play, we find ourselves watching the play he will eventually write.

If it is touring near you do try and see it. It is one of my top five theatre experiences of all time. The set-pieces at the end of each half are outstanding and it is worth not leaving your seat after the curtain calls (as a promise to the audience, made earlier in the play is delivered upon).

It has left Bristol now but will doubtless be around for a while.

Twelfth Night

Wonderful experience last night as we saw Twelfth Night performed in the open air in Queen's Square, Bristol by a small, all-male cast, The Lord Chamberlain's Men. This is as close as I've got to experiencing Shakespeare the way his original audiences might have enjoyed it. Men played female roles and up to three parts each. Many quick changes of costume were required.

Perhaps four centuries ago uninvolved, drunken passers-by would still have yelled to distract. Seagulls might also have swooped overhead. Drum and bass powered vehicles would probably not have figured in the off-putting list.

But this cross-dressing comedy was hilarious afresh as a man, dressed as a woman pretending to be a man, was wooed by a woman dressed as a man, no wait, a man dressed as a woman, see even I'm confused.

Even the rain held off for three hours although it was a bit parky for July. And what a joy to sit with wine in hand whilst watching.

Many thanks to all those who have applauded my ability to successfully spell Twelfth only once in the first draft of this post.

Anthony and Clepoatra

Enjoyed this production at Bristol's Tobacco Factory last week. Intimate theatre in the round is great. I always note that one or two expressions from everyday life today were either attributable to Shakespeare or, at least, in everyday use when he wrote. This time we noticed 'Take the hint.'

Plot summary. Everyone is a devious liar anxious to extend his kingdom or fight for the eventual winners. The central relationship is based on lust regularly undermined by jealousy. People die. Great fun.

Japanese Traditional Theatre

Nothing quite prepares you for kabuki, one of the three styles of Japanese traditional theatre. I imagine in the same way that nothing would quite prepare a foreigner for pantomime. We did have the benefit of an English commentary (not translation) via an ear-piece but it was still one of the most inaccessible things I have ever experienced. And strangely, hauntingly, beautiful.

These images are of the theatre in Ginza. We had tickets for an afternoon performance. Performances last for up to five hours but the audience tend to come and go, pop off for something to eat or bring their own feast. This is not considered rude. In Japan I was, at five foot ten, somewhat of a giant and so the 90 minutes we did, with my knees almost touching my jaw, were plenty long enough.

In kabuki there are a number of standard works, a bit like the classical theatre canon in the UK. The play we saw was about a samurai being stirred from retirement to go and take revenge for a friend's death.

Costumes are elaborate and expensive. Movements are deliberate and slow. Black clad stage assistants run on from time to time to move props or help with the action. When one of the actors had to drop a child an assistant was standing behind to take the infant and lower it slowly to the floor. All parts are played by men. The language is an ancient text, difficult to follow even for those familiar with the tongue. Our Japanese-speaking hosts could only pick out a few words. The play also has a narrator who sings atonally against the contra-clash of a stringed, lute-like instrument. I am running out of language here. The audience appreciate the way certain movements are carried out and some lines delivered. At the entrances of the more famous stars they yell out that person's stage name as an appreciation.

I'm glad I can say I have experienced it.

ISIHAC

I have been a fan of Radio 4's I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue for years now, providing, as it does, a six week diet of sillyness and hilarity on Monday nights at 6.30 p.m. two or three times a year. It has changed in my lifetime (they are currently recording the 49th series) from something genuinely funny because of the originality of the material to something that is genuinely funny because of the reptition of themes. Every episode there will be humiliation of pianist Colin Sell, outrageous remarks at the expense of scorer Samantha and the same games such as Mornington Crescent or One Song to the Tune of Another. The panel always consists of Barry Crier, Graham Garden and Tim Brook-Taylor with a special guest. Humphrey Lyttelton always chairs it.

Last night we were fortunate enough to have tickets to the recording in Cardiff of the show. I won't give away any secrets but it was brilliant to finally see Samantha in the flesh and observe the lazer display board. Being in the studio audience at a radio recording is like being told the secret of a conjuring trick.

Although they will be broadcast on consecutive Mondays, June 18th and 25th, the two episodes were both recorded at the same show with an interval in between. When edited they will be 28 minutes long but we were in the theatre from 7.30 until 10.40 and there was lots of material which will not eventually be broadcast. Humphey, who is in his 80s now, needs to have two or three goes at each of his links and then redo some of them at the end as well. But we laughed lots and enjoyed especially the singing of guest Rob Brydon.

In passing, a few words of praise about the Wales Millennium Centre where the recording took place. It is as magnificent a 2,000 seater venue as I have even been in and it is thoroughly modern and beautifully designed. It uses fantasic materials, especially wood, exciting sea-themed shapes in keeping with its dockside location and as an auditorium has good sight lines and a clear sound. We were able to get from our seats to the car park in under ten minutes and out to the M4 without queuing. We were only an hour from home and in bed by midnight even going back via Chepstow to drop off friends.

The newly developed Cardiff Bay area has great cafe culture (we ate well at Mimosa Kitchen and bar) and the amazing Welsh Assembly Building amongst many other fine examples of modern architecture and preserved old buildings. Terrific.

Not the End of the World

Click on the link for a fuller review than my earlier post, on the BBC Collective site.

Not the End of the World

You have three days left to catch the Bristol Old Vic's remarkable portrayal of life aboard Noah's Ark. A flight of imagination turns five chapters of Genesis into an hour and a half of brilliant, physical theatre. There are births, deaths and marriages, treachery, demon possession, songs, stowaways and animal Gods. Never seen an actor do a realistic portrayal of a pregnant wildebeest using mallets? Get there. Tickets for tonight still available and maybe for the weekend too. The dove flies, the mink steals cubs and the rainbow totally rocks.

'A man's head is an incredibly small place to keep all the plans of God.'