Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet came immediately to mind with the guitar-strummed opening. Feste (Orowa Sikder), the clown, and Radiohead, share roles as purveyor of unrequited love. Duke Orsino (Matt Ball) is the victim of one-sided desire in Shakespeare’s comedy, and in this O’Reilly production is played rather effeminately nicely reinforcing the ambiguity of gender and identity central to the plot.

Music is certainly the food of love and audience members will be forgiven for shouting “play on” for the Johnny Flynn style interludes which are integral to the triumph of the play. Nevertheless reducing the experience to a great gig would be unrepresentative of Declan Clowry’s creation in which physicality and movement is delighted in.  A dramatic lunge at Olivia in Malvolio’s passion is synchronised with the well known “thrust” of the climax to “some are born great, some achieve greatness….” while the Renaissance concept of the characters as Victims of Fortune is brought across in the whirling and turning of the choreography. (Even Orsino has recourse to the terrestrial domain with a steadying of his unstable situation by leaning on the bar.)

With the staging the directors have kept the influence of medieval culture on Shakespeare’s work; a split stage of two mansions representing the different realms of Orsino and Olivia while the platea is a shared space. The two worlds are most noticeably bridged by the Clown whose blues-emitting guitar penetrates both ruling spheres. The sartorial choices reflect the prohibition era Illyria with a sensational trench coat catching my eye.

Maria’s (Alice Fraser) Little Black Dress makes this “good wench” a very sexy waiting-woman to counterpart the equally sultry Olivia (Imogen O’Sullivan). In a play where gender is obfuscated and disguise is adopted, these two women stand out as clear bastions of femininity and Renaissance girl power.  Viola (Kate O’Connor) is brilliant at fixing the irony of her situation and dons her mask convincingly to entrench Cesario in the camp of “we men.”

The duality of the play is built into the set and played out in the myriad combinations of character pairs. The element of twice was even extended to the number of improvisations appearing in the preview, with musician acting messenger; “err, there’s a man at the gate” and Sir Toby Belch (David Cochrane) attempting to commence a quite different scene to the rest of the cast.

This chaos only added to the jocular nature of the play in keeping with the Christmas festival of Twelth Night –a characteristically riotous season. The two drunkards enforced this joviality with some side-splitting dancing and stumbling. Whether chaos comes from order of order from chaos the ordered chaos or chaotic order of the production makes the play a success.

4 stars

The Hothouse, a portrayal of an unspecified asylum-esque institution, is one of Pinter’s most harrowing works; the depiction is restricted to the small group of staff, raped and murdered patients referred to only by number.  Such a play demands a set of nuanced and complex performances; it requires something ambitious and original to make a worthwhile production.  Fortunately, this version by Illyria Productions claims to do just that: the programme makes the sweeping statement that for every part they have obtained “the most talented individual for that role within the university.”

As soon as I entered the college squash court where the rehearsal was being held, to be greeted by the sight of the cast of The Hothouse standing in a circle, intently focused on throwing several tennis balls between them (apparently to heighten appreciation of Pinter’s infamous pauses), I knew this was no run-of-the-mill theatre preview.  The twenty-strong technical team is also present; this production has one of largest budgets of any student production at the playhouse, and they seem intent to use it.  I was afforded only a brief glimpse of the first act, devoid of set or lighting, but those few scenes promised that every expectation would be fulfilled.

Those few scenes easily showcased the obvious talent of the cast, but it was the methods of director Jamie MacDonagh that truly shone.  Each of the scenes was performed two or three times: for each iteration, the director instructed the actors to change their objectives and persona for the scene.  These alternate between the bizarre and the brilliant; watching the inept Roote (Matt Gavan) desperately trying to prevent his subordinate Gibbs (Ziad Samaha) from leaving halfway through a conversation, however ludicrous, suddenly exposed the true nature of their relationship more brazenly than the dialogue cared to do.  In every performance, each character became a caricature of a single aspect of their personality or desire; it was fascinating to watch these slowly be constructed into the combination that both director and cast feels best  captures the essence of Pinter’s work.

It is a testimony as much to the skill of the cast as to the brilliance of the play that every scene that they played out, no matter how it is done, remained fresh.  MacDonagh promises his method will produce a subtly different performance each night, adapted as the accomplished actors fine tune their characters responses to reveal a marginal variation in the rich subtext every time the curtain opens.  The question even crossed my mind, watching the process played out multiple times in the space of an hour, whether the rehearsal could be more enlightening and entertaining than the performance.  Nevertheless, the finished product, in whatever form it appears, will be something truly spectacular, cerebral and haunting to behold.

5 STARS

For anyone who’s ever read some of Stephen Fry’s later works, you’ll know what to expect of Latin! or Tobacco and Boys. I can remember reading The Liar and Fry’s autobiography at the tender age of fourteen and being appropriately scandalised, perhaps even a little turned on. Indeed, if rent-boys, horse-shagging and the ill-conceived ‘limp biscuit’ game are the staples of Fry’s later literary diet, you can only imagine what his 22 year-old self will have concocted, and it’s our great pleasure to bring you Latin! at the BT in 2^nd week.

Latin! has been challenging, no doubt about it – a script relying on two sole characters and a number of tricky monologues always will be. Fry presents us with Dominic Clarke, the disillusioned Latin teacher at Chartham Park Prep, plagued by memories of a miserable Cambridge career and ready to explore, shall we say, pastures new. Clarke is a ‘sensitive in a world of literary rugby players’, seeking release through Cartwright, the blonde, the beautiful, the apple of his eye. Yet there’s one problem with Clarke’s muse: Cartwright is thirteen. Thrown into this tempestuous mix we encounter Brookshaw, a jaded bachelor with an almost fanatical devotion to the school and an uncanny hatred for Dominic.

 Auditions for the roles of the elder men were long and exhaustive: it was essential for so small a cast to ensure we Got It Right. Once we had, initial rehearsals inevitably focussed on building a rapport between the actors and helping each to understand the other’s character. What will strike anyone watching the play is the intensity of the script: fast-paced dialogues replete with puns-galore are set alongside more reflective, calmer scenes. Particularly for the younger Dominic, much of our rehearsal focussed on maintaining that slightly hysterical energy which abounds in so much of Fry’s work. Ultimately, the play questions the nature of love, and the nature of a true ‘education’, as well as humorously poking fun at the politics behind any staffroom door. Come to the BT in 2^nd week for Chelsea-buns, peanut-butter smearings and, er, bicycle pumps for a lesson you won’t forget. 

The Hothouse has, for the most part, been built. Most lines are learnt, all the moves are known, all the motivations carefully planned. We know the shape of it, its peaks and troughs. We even have a sense that it could be quite entertaining. There have been flashes of brilliance, in amongst the various practical challenges of moving and talking simultaneously. A phrase suddenly cauterizes the air, seems both the most natural and the most extraordinary thing to say: the director purrs, the man playing your secretary looks alarmed. And then you suddenly realise that you’re in the wrong place, that you’re supposed to be pouring imaginary whiskey from a Diet Coke bottle, that you’ve no idea which line comes next. It’s frustrating, because you just have to shove the play down your throat, and it feels clumsy and amateurish. You’re shouting all the time, save for when you forget your lines. You notice this, and deliver the next scene entirely in a hoarse whisper. The rehearsal finishes, and the director reassures you that we’ve made a lot of progress, that it’s still very early in the process. He tells you not to worry, and to be honest, you don’t: you’re too busy working things out, and learning it all.

This bit of the process is necessary but frustrating. The Hothouse is just emerging from it. Act One is fixed, Act Two is nearly there. We approach our first full run of Act One for anticipation that we might get it locked down with more than a week to go. We do it, with the other actors as our audience. And suddenly the play seems leaden. It’s as though, by wrestling the text to the ground, by mastering it, we’ve made it quite dull. No-one laughs, except when someone stumbles over a line. There is a sense that we’re sleep-walking through the scenes. One of the watching actors gives up, and begins to read a textbook.

When it’s finished, the atmosphere is sombre. “A bit limp” mutters one. “Deeply undynamic” says another. The director politely agrees, but reassures us that now the structure is in place, we can play, and knock most of it down. Playing will bring it to life, he says. Agreements are muttered. We all trudge outside, for a cigarette or a shiver. Suddenly we seem to have realised that it is possible that the show won’t be any good. We remember we have an open rehearsal for the student press that evening. We all feel a bit shame-faced.

And then, that afternoon, we play. We’re given secret instructions: “You have to get out of that room”, “You must remain as close to his face as possible”, “She is now your 13-year-old daughter”. The results are frequently farcical, but always liberating and occasionally revelatory. The director then tells us to stick to our original motivations, but up their intensity ten-fold. Suddenly “I want to squash Lush” means that you’ve pushed him to the ground, and are spitting your lines into his ear. Everything expands: you’re obscenely drunk, ecstatic, devastated. The whole scope of the play is expanded. Most of it is dross, but it is always enlightening. You’re reminded of your sheer range of options. The constraints of all the play-building you’ve been doing are transformed into jumping-off points for a whole new set of performances. We do the open rehearsal, and it goes well. I’ve no idea what the journos thought, but it went swimmingly for us, still clowning and capering, pushing intensity and changing tack, dancing through the text.

My old man, Roote, is coming on nicely. He’s been assembled from a variety of corpses: half-faded memories of teachers from primary school, a friend’s grandfather, an author on Desert Island Disks. I’ve stitched them together, and he’s just beginning to twitch into life. On Monday, I will shave my head, and most of my beard off. My nose, running almost at the same angle as my forehead, should look brutish, transformed from shrewish to shark-like. Without sideburns and neck hair, my face will look shorter, and my brow will be more prominent. With a moustache, my chin, already weak, will look quite forlorn. Hopefully, this is what Roote looks like. Hopefully, it will jolt him into animation. If not, at least I’ll be bang on trend.

With the 2012 Oscars coming up at the end of February, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist is the one film I hope, and expect, to take home the biggest awards: Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor and Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score – this film deserves recognition for every brilliant aspect.

The film’s story explores Hollywood’s transition from the age of silent pictures to talkies. Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, looking like a Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, and takes the audience from the height of Valentin’s extraordinary silent-film career into its inevitable and troublesome lull, exploring the personal trauma it wreaks before arriving, re-born, at the other end. Bérénice Bejo plays Peppy Miller, a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Clara Bow, displaying a young talent flourishing during an exciting era of cinematic history, stealing the heart and, momentarily, the career of Valentin.

What is extraordinary about Dujardin and Bejo, aside from their captivating and palpable chemistry, is their complete mastery of dramatic expression. For these two talents, sound is not needed to communicate powerful emotion or enrapture the audience in scenes of great comedy and tragedy. What most filled me with joy and awe is Hazanavicius’ remarkable prowess in playing with both form and subject matter. Valentin is trapped within the very medium that structures the film: one scene has him crying out in anguish, yet emitting no sound, in response to the infiltration of sound into his silent universe (a clever and humorously postmodern shock). Another scene, using the self-conscious absence of sound to create comedy, has Valentin attempting suicide by placing a revolver into his mouth – after a tense, almost chilling, emotional build-up the film jump shots to the written declaration, ‘BANG!’. The next shot shows Miller’s car crashed into a tree.

Each actor, and every scene, is furnished with a component that stands out on its own merits too – the score. It is exceedingly difficult to strain against the emotional trajectory that The Artist wants to take you through when every stride and flourish is blessed with such poignant and delightful melodies. The score compliments and reinforces every part of this wonderful story, spilling out and begging to be a background to our own reality.

The Artist is simple storytelling at its very best, infused with modern spices, and has something for everyone – it should be compulsory viewing for any lover of modern and classic cinema and will definitely give you something to talk about.

FIVE STARS