![]() Mountford, meanwhile, reveals another trap by cleverly invoking the play's popularity to suggest that those with a more extensive knowledge of Shakespeare (like her, perhaps?) cannot be so easily duped into calling it great. But remember that nobody likes you when you're slagging off Shakespeare. It is all very well to think, as Spencer does, that "after the thrilling oratory and bloody assassination of the first three acts, Shakespeare's play dwindles into tedious inconsequentiality". ![]() Don't be tempted to imitate the Telegraph's Charles Spencer or the Standard's Fiona Mountford by blaming the playwright. Good and violent then, should be your line on this production, but none too clever. "They aren't more disturbing than teenagers at a pop concert," he says, "or much more realistic than sea-anemones caught in a current." (That's a reference to arm-waving, in case you wondered.) ![]() Nightingale speaks for many when he grumbles about the back-projected CGI mob created by designer William Dudley. But although Billington finds it a "visceral" production "that certainly captures the chaos of a divided city", he grieves the loss of "the play's subtle characterisation and sophisticated political debate". The critics like Greg Hicks's conceited Caesar, and most approve of Darrell D'Silva's debauched Mark Antony. "This is, in effect, the Rome of the BBC/HBO television series," reckons Ian Shuttleworth in the Financial Times, "in its graphic depiction of what is claimed to be the unsalubrious historical reality." (He means insalubrious, but we'll let it go.) "The assassination of Caesar, as recorded in Suetonius," explains Michael Billington, writing that name on the blackboard, "is a prolonged, messy fight to the death, and is ironically echoed, on the plebeian level, by the vicious street murder of Cinna the poet." And violence, you will remember from her production of Titus Andronicus at the Globe, is Bailey's speciality. Roll on his Prince of Denmark.And this point, the critics agree, is that Rome was a violent place. The central performances go some way to make up for this, Justin Salinger's Newton sneaking around in a camp periwig, and John Heffernan making the conscience-racked Möbius – slipping between madness and clear-eyed despair – nearly as fascinating as Hamlet. But now Dürrenmatt's scenario seems a puzzling allegory, like a theorem in cryptic algebra. The play would surely have felt more urgent in 1961, when nuclear arms were proliferating. Dr Von Zahnd (Sophie Thompson in near panto mode) is the hunched spinster who runs this madhouse, assuring an irked detective (John Ramm) that she knows who's dangerous and who's not. On top of these delusions, they keep murdering their nurses, whom they claim to love. ![]() A trio of mad (or maybe pretend-mad) scientists are holed up in a sanatorium, dressed as Einstein, Newton and Möbius. Yet despite scintillating performances, there's something sterile about this darkening comedy. Now comes a rare revival of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Physicists, a satire-going-on-ethical debate about scientific progress and moral responsibility. Lastly, artistic director Josie Rourke's first season at the Donmar has become daringly varied. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |