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What’s the greatest box-office hit in Renaissance England? By now you’ll gauge from the title it isn’t Hamlet, Lear, Much Ado, Doctor Faustus or The Duchess of Malfi.

Director of Globe Studies Dr Will Tosh introduced the literal nine-day wonder: Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess,the most popular play of the early modern era. Think Spitting Image.

The draw was an unheard-of satire on living persons, and not just any: but Spanish court dignitaries negotiating marriage with the English royal family. The past is a different audience. They cheer things differently there.

It’s a play that uniquely ran for nine consecutive days bar Sunday from 5-14^thAugust 1624, and probably enjoyed two performances on some of them. Yet celebrating this work’s 400^th the first thing to note is that this wildly popular, deeply-discussed play has enjoyed virtually no revival. This was a phenomenon that when finally shut down forcibly ended the career of one of England’s greatest dramatists. He died three years later.

Before introducing the four actors, Tosh (afterwards WT) introduced Dr José A. Pérez Díez (afterwards JPD). Pérez Díez is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Leeds University’s School of English. His specialisms include editing the works of John Marston and the use of ‘Spanish literary sources by the dramatists of the Jacobean period, particularly John Fletcher and his circle of frequent collaborators (Francis Beaumont, Nathan Field, and Philip Massinger).’

Prince Charles in Peril

The scale of that audience first. It’s estimated that 25,000-27,000 saw it, 10% of London’s population. A huge draw was undoubtedly satire and word-of-mouth; certainly some sense the production itself might have poured oil on an incendiary set of papers and set it off with a cannon the like of which burned the first Globe down.  

The 1623 negotiations – Prince Charles’s marriage to the Infanta proved fruitless after eight months – was premised on a horrible Spanish misunderstanding: Charles would convert! The English merely wanted a trade agreement which succeeded.

Meanwhile the English were worried Charles was abroad. Not just that he might convert, but the heir to the throne was literally all at sea coming and going.  His elder brother, the original Prince of Wales Henry had died in 1612: there was no spare. His sister was already the exiled Winter Queen.

The Play

WT: This satire really is nearest to Spitting Image for several reasons: the way Middleton framed his characters in terms of chess pieces; the way the play developed after it was licensed; and the production itself taking it way beyond caricature.

God knows how this play got through the censor. Intriguingly, by June 1624 it was approved. But its first performance on August 5^th is a long lapse for the time: 55 days. In the course of those months the play was surreptitiously enlarged.

First the game itself is one of clear metaphor and everyone got it: Chess is high politics. Chess furnishes a visual conceit.  Players enacting chess pieces of Black and White House (Spain and England) move across and as the Black House pieces try seducing and worse, the White pieces resist and martial their forces.

Professor Gary Taylor, famous for his work on proving Middleton wrote or revised some of Shakespeare (beyond their collaboration in Timon), tried to prove these are chess characters, that they move in relation to chess: but it doesn’t work. What we have are latent chess characters or a catch-all symbolism. Still, it’s very unusual for the period for anyone to develop such a conceit.

Scenes not seen include the whole cast: being chess it involves 32 bodies on stage but not that number speaking. Mostly they’re reduced to smaller scenes, and we’re focusing on four chamber scenes.

JPD: Think comparing a big Bruckner symphony with a string quartet.

WT: And that’s how chamber works from the  Wanamaker. And of course you the audience. Tempted to use all of you here!

WT: So. Who are these people playing tonight?

Simon Scardifield (Black Knight)

Anna Crichlow (White Queen’s Pawn)

Emma Pallant (Black Queen’s Pawn)

Michael Fenner (The Fat Bishop)

JPD: Now we know the Black Knight was Count Gondomar. Or to give him his full name Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, 1st Count of Gondomar (1567-1626). Twice Ambassador to England, and with a painful medical condition (more anon).

A popular bogeyman, he was an extremely crafty politician and huge bibliophile – he possessed the largest library in Spain, bigger than the king’s. And he had an interesting friendship with King James.

Here as Black Knight, he’s trying to convert the White Queen’s Pawn. We’re not sure whom she might be. The King’s wife Anne had died in 1619. His daughter, the Winter Queen was out of the country: indeed, in exile. But we’ve also got to take on board not just the xenophobia being 36 years after the Armada, but the fact that we’re not always in 1623-24. It’s a more fluid time-zone in which the White Queen might well be the Winter Queen a few years earlier. Or Queen Anne and her daughter might be portrayed.  Or the White Queen’s Pawn might be a lady-in-waiting or no-one specific.

Nevertheless, the Black Knight’s more subtle than the Jesuit opportunist who tries a far more venal approach to the hapless Pawn. As we’ll see.

Scene. Seduction

An aside where Black Knight (Simon or SS) is looking scornfully on Michael ( MF, The Fat Bishop)  trying to seduce White Queen’s Pawn (Anna) in his most rotund voice, and with an aside “I didn’t write this stuff” cracking up the audience. Michael relishes his role and rolls his Rs.

WT: What do you think of stage movement: to Simon

Simon: what confused me was the opposition is slightly baffled. He disagrees with the Black or Fat Bishop’s move as far too clumsy impersonating a Black Pawn (seducing with White Pawn with a book FB then sexually advances; and later oversteps and attempts rape). He’s a Jesuit and thus different.

WT: Here’s the first point. Gondomar is secular. He’s answerable to the Spanish King. Whilst Jesuits like the Bishop report to Pope Gregory, he reports to the “universal monarchy”. There’s conflict in the Black House.

Question from the audience about slaves. It’s not developed here.

Then another asked what proportion of population played chess? WT/JPD: Quite high, apparently. We see the scene between the revealed lovers playing chess in The Tempest for example. It represents Harmony.

WT: Can we play the scene again?

The Scene’s replayed. This is a novelty in Research in Action. There’s more vehemence, more at stake.

JPD: How does the Black Knight enjoy reminiscing how much he does for the monarchy?

Simon: Far more than he should! He’s very theatrical, like “I’m a shit but you love me.”

WT: The Black House very happily acknowledges it.

Q: Shakespeare does this, does Middleton?

JPD: Yes. De Flores in The Changeling and Lucia in Women Beware Women plays at chess.

WT: Now we’ve heard about racialising discourse. So –

JPD: The Spanish lived 800 years under and with the Moors, so they were racialised: both by themselves and from outside as having dark skins. The Ambassador complains King of Spain being called King of the Blacks.

Q: Is there something of racialising in the White Queen Pawn image of Infanta? Is she partly English?

WT: The White Queen’s daughter was the exiled Queen of Bohemia.

Q: It reads like a terrible opera programme! Is Gondomar slowed to move in sharp curved diagonals though?

WT: Yes, was struck by that 

Simon: Yes and he’s his own man.

Q: There’s a racialisation with women? Are accents involved here?

WT: It’s not clear but possible. Croatian.

Q older regular: The Spanish were obsessed with blood purity, and expelled Moors.

Q: So in1613-14 the actual marriage negotiations began, 10 years earlier.

WT: Yes.

Q: About 1588 being so recent, but it’s 36 years.

WT: Yes there’s still massive prejudice.

JPD: 1588 is mentioned twice in the play.

Extract 2 Act 2.Sc 2, a late addition:

WT: 2.2. is a scene added late on. It’s thought that William Rowley was cast as the clown role. Caricature of de Dominoes. He was a double convert. He converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism and then decamped to return to the Faith but was not believed, or just punished. He died later in 1624 in prison.

Scene: MF as FB emerges and sees SS as BK and his fistula with some quiet derision. BK is bent on Revenge.

JPD: Gives the Fistula story. Gondomar in his 50s was afflicted with a large anal fistula. He was conveyed with as little pain as possible in a sedan with a seat and large hole in it. This was the problem. It was unmistakable. The portrayal of it on stage, when there was no particular direction, was what alerted the Spanish Ambassador to complain by the second day, August 6^th.

Q from WT to Mike (MF) about his FP character.

MF: I play him as a glutton!

JPD: talks of de Dominoes, his both-sides journalism

SS: Yes, he’s glutton too and a Lib Dem type.

Q re the importance of the treaty – isn’t it essentially one of food and wine? Canary Islands and sherry? 

JPD:  Not so much food but drink certainly, trying to bribe English. It didn’t work

JPD: it does take for granted religious institutions are rich and corrupt and the English not.

Except the Bishop of Winchester, someone wags.

MF: I find the fat in the voice, I do audio books!

Q re the recognizability of the caricature – as most were well versed?

Q Individual bishops were not rich but establishing funds and security for their children. Very different financial model but just as bad.

Q Dead Ringers etc no knowing what exactly was portaye dthere but FB or man with Forums no power over their own arse. One gag then within you can do anything 

Q turncoat how much brought out?

WT: Well observed can see in performance 

Q now wholly ironic as diplomats delight but whole game is undermined. The pieces move themselves.

Q student on movement chess

Q point about the Fat Bishop is fascinating just a bladder to -!!!

My Q about the spitting image amping up the whole crisis. That the text, even amended as it was, might have got away with it in performance, had not the players with their ruthless mimetic brio reproduced Gondomar’s carriage onstage and his anal fistula.

WT: Yes and it’s particularly unusual as the King’s Mem were not known for risk taking.

JPD: It ended up really serious for Middleton. He was not allowed to write again, and his son was imprisoned… But it made much money – a huge profit. And the text was reproduced, and printed.  

Q I’m not able to access texts I and others responded.

I answered by flourishing my copy, it’s available as one of four Oxford texts in one of two editions comprising eight plays: or was in 2009.

The original 2010 Oxford edition of the complete works presided over by Gary Taylor is still available. There’s a United Cambridge edition that came out last year (2023).

WT: As for modern performances, 1971 saw two university productions, one each at Oxford and Cambridge. And that’s it!

I wanted to add that there was a scheduled December 2019 performance of A Game at Chess in this very space with Read Not Dead, that was cancelled: no-one at the time could give a reason. One assumes a clash of some major kind. This would have been filmed and furnished our only film resource – as well as for those who would have attended on the day. A real loss since RND seems to have been superseded by this new (and in itself doubly welcome), in-depth Research. A full performance would have been wroth drawing on.

Q How much work is being done here for us?  Why might the King’s Men take on play.

WT: Good question. The Fat Bishop is a bit Falstaff.

Q Is there any significance in moving backwards and forward but pawns only moving forward – metaphor for conversion?

WT: Good point!

Q of 36 food and numerology. Was middleton at all taken up with this, and should we red into any numerical significance, or coded messages?

WT: No!

Part 2

Following on directly from the last, the Conversion Scene

Michael and Simon

MF (scatological dialogue, much laughter “I didn’t write it”)

SS enters – a letter flatters him into changing sides.

SS though lays into him. And then SS declares as Gondomar/Black Knight that he’ll conquer him then the world. SS reaches the verge of the stage and jump triumphantly into the air.

WT talks to SS a bit about his role. SS says he now finally reveals himself and quotes passages.

WT: The text is like a treaty that would be made 

SS thinking of all the stuff done here in the last part – and this is quite weird.

JPD: There’s the politics of slaves like “keep your distance” as FB said and the chess bag everyone is frightened of. The politics of slavery is interesting.

WT: It’s seeing and not seeing chess moves. I’m asking Simon and Michael to try the scene terms diagonal as l V SS straight hen of course unpredictably. Almost from the top.

Shall we play it with the possible chess moves by those pieces built in? So Simon can advance and retreat onto any square as a Knight, but Mike can only move on diagonals?

The two actors take the scene now enacting diagonals and straight lines respectively. It’s very funny, as SS hems MF in, who finds on the Wanamaker stage less room to manoeuvre diagonally and gets cornered.

WT: It’s quite difficult to act and move – it’s a kind of drama school exercise.

There followed a quickfire series of interjections and questions, all around the theme of movement.

Q Movement means they seem to have less control over themselves 

WT: Good point

Student Q because of Gondomar not being able to sit down Simon can’t sit either.

Q About Webster. Are there similar things going on with him? 

Q Wouldn’t it have made sense that black and white would be left sinister and White would be right?

WT/JPS/SS/MF et al: Damnit!!!! they all say. We should have thought of that.

Q It’s unlikely the movement was used all over the board like that. Middleton’s fluid games were a theatrical and dynamic thing.

But with a fistula he might walk with a limp

WT: Glad we’re all gone there in our minds!

SS And no jumping about!

Q It made sense to walk and talk quietly in asides 

SS The Wanamaker’s ideal for asides, though I’ve not worked before but at the Globe.

Q No pillars in the Globe? Two are cantilevered.

Q I liked the movement – the flinch or cornering seemed natural

Michael: Yes that was a natural response 

WT: We can crack it open with a lounge lizard look

Michael: Even the bones experience remaining

Q again re movement: It was though controlled

Q Bishops can’t and knight can travel to every square?

WT: Yes

Q Weren’t the actors necessarily fidgety and in chess that’s not so.

WT: That’s stasis and tension

Q follows on: the Bishop’s move is clear and goes at speed, a good index of confidence. When trapped little diagonals make it very hard to hide. It’s a State of mind, we can read them through their actual movement. So the Black Knight is much more difficult to read his minds and moves are far easier to disguise.

Overall it was felt that though fascinating, these ridged choreographies aren’t as compelling as one would wish in a performance. So ultimately, a fascinating experiment that’s been abandoned.

WT introduces final extract no Q’s sadly

Anna and Emma

About the Black Queen’s Pawn, or BQP JPD: is not certain what they mean, quite who they might be

There’s a peculiar BQP agency: one woman wanted to be a martyr setting out to be one in England, but never succeeded

We’re doing the end of Act 3 – there’s no acts 4 and 5.

There’s a stand-off with Anna and Emma circling a different kind of seduction.

WQP is nearly raped – a Jesuit overreach 

BQP still trying to seduce WQP

A plucked string music played offstage – a remarkable seduction scene

WT: WQP has pledged herself to virginity as the man she was in love with, was castrated by the Black King’s Pawn, BKP.  There’s an erotic and magical element. So she’s celibate through trauma, not choice.

JPD says it’s really a derided kind of magic. Playing on that prejudice.

Anna: About attitudes Anna points out how much has changed. WQP’s not a virgin through dedication to God, it’s trauma. She still has desire even if she’s committed to God.

With the BQP the game in room to seduce a woman to sexual fantasy is just part of it. To enlist her is the prize the Black Knight is interested in. But there’s of course the Fat Bishop’s lust to deal with.

Asked by a theatre director (someone I know by sight). This grooming is all very modern but it’s written to ride a sectarian wave and some accommodation must be made. Protestantism is being crushed in Europe. Serious thought should be given to an incendiary play.

WT: Yes, serious thought to what plays are not performed and now these change. For instance plays deemed unplayable in the mid 19^th century are perfectly acceptable now, but visa versa that’s also true.

The director talks of how this is framed: a Catholic seduction and numbers game only: nothing of heaven or salvation. It appealed to deep ingrained prejudice.

For instance, if this were staged in Spain, or with Catholics now? Staging there are moments whose power even on short acquaintance is vastly enjoyable but in any preparation time one would definitely ask the police first!

Q magical Egyptian glass? Racialising?

WT: Yes absolutely right, there’s a very similar othering

Q Last scene – isn’t it modern and accessible?

WT: Yes, pure grooming – quite disturbing

Q Weren’t major converts to Catholicism high profile people? So it’s hard not to think it happened 

Q This has been so intense. We get sexual violence, a cast nearly raped? Then groomed? Then beaten again? Metaphor’s freaking!

WT: Yes an excellent observation.

And that’s it, the actors are not allowed to work here more than eight hours and have been since noon, so we cut off at 20.15.

A Game at Chess

Shakespeare’s Globe Stages

Shakespeare’s Globe

http://ww.shakespearesglobe.com

Photo credit Orange Tree Theatre

Simon Jenner September 2nd-7th 2024

The Greenhouse Festival LAMDA Festival of New Directors in association with Orange Tree presents six plays, often the early work of established women playwrights. With the exception of Shakespeare who gets a speed-read.

LAMDA, who also bring graduates and young professional actors, are teamed with the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, who supply designers and other creatives. Each usually works on two or more shows and their variety’s a showcase of its own.

Every one of these productions could enjoy a run at the Orange Tree: they’re exciting and accomplished. Sometimes as in the first and last plays here, there’s been some radical rethinking.

The emphasis here is on directors and to an extent, creatives. But performances are also covered.

Alice Birch Revolt She Said, Revolt Again

Alice Birch’s 2014 RSC play delivers its title. Director Zana Hoxha takes some directions literally and has them voiced. Above all Birch’s exhortation not to be well-behaved. It’s a revolutionary open text with dynamic exceptions and inflammatory potential. Hoxha seizes on this, alters details and confirms its freshness with a few tweaks.

With Hoxha ‘bad behaviour’ extends to Birch”s text as she cuts the last two pages: a brief Act Four where four women commune on the difficulty of the struggle. Instead Revolt concludes in the previous monologue delivered by Natalie May: a self-immolatory one ending abruptly in an act. Hoxha goes for theatricality all through, stripping out provisional hope. In her production, there’s even less of it than Birch allowed. We glimpse a dystopic future where just a few women cling on.

Tanaka Mpofu also sings; there’s an improv opening. And despite Birch’s direction of no set, Grace Rumsey’s one of blue-green sea-wrack portends world-ending drek scurfed round. Evocative costume changes add texture and signal scene-changes. 

A water melon’s detritus liquifies a shopping aisle whilst (not literally) a punter strips off, questions shop-floor managers’ motives: their misogynistic language is transformed. There’s much floor mopping.

If Birch was writing this a few years later she might have opted for the gender fluidity and exclusion of male actors as here. It works memorably (with May and Mpofu for instance in the opening anti-seduction scene). When performative male roles are indicated through language, they’re reclaimed as different levels of oppression women experience: in structural relationships from sex to work. 

Patriarchy extends everywhere but in the opening section language (even “penis”) is appropriated as possession, here subverted by Birch as the female or ‘possessed’ role takes power, through language. It’s done with delicious humour and (considering later scenes) optimism.

In work scenes that structure is challenged: three employees want Monday off where the employer (Xixi Xiao in whip-crack mode) asserts they own the faces, even smiles of their employees. 

Hoxha’s sheer theatricality works even if some subtlety is jettisoned with (say) Act Four’s rapprochement excised. Revolt already plays with open form – and subverts traditional scenes with named roles. (Ghoti Fisher’s lighting tracks performances with versatility.)

This works well in a formalised three hander. Olive McHugh often delivers speeches of affect and is central here. Where Xiao remains almost mute, May growls in a turban. In a Chekhovian-looking tea party a mother furiously confronts her own mother’s implacable coldness; the granddaughter utters “nightingale” and stray words. However these two unite against the more vociferous middle generation in an astonishing act (one Birch prescribed elsewhere in different guises too, faithfully followed). 

Hoxha keeps pace limber, with an exuberantly gifted cast. There have been virtuosic deliveries of some monologues: Hoxha’s team refuse such easy aplomb and applause. A few words are substituted like “genocide”. It fits this even chillier climate.

Revolt has shifted here, oppression internalised. Whilst non-specific around gender, the performative element underscores how post #MeToo feminism has adopted self-interrogative critiques that blow apart even the binaries of Revolt. 

A reaffirmation of Birch’s brilliance, not withstanding cuts. An essential update on the struggle, Hoxha’s Revolt hurls defiance in the face of despair.

Olive McHugh Tanaka Mpofu Xixi Xiao Natalia May

Voice Actors : Gloria Olajide, Alex Holliday, Diego Zozaya , James Walsh, Robert Furey, Samuel Ferrer

 Writer Alice Birch Director Zana Hxoha Set and Costume Designer Grace Rumsey Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer Aidan Gibson Movement Director Kristin Fredrickson Instrument Consultant Julia Deng Hanzu Stage Manager Ace Turner Set and Costume Assistant Xiaomin Fan

Ivan Vypryaev Illusions

Four people in white around white boxes and props tell of two interlinked marriages from a teleological deathbed and chain reaction going back 54 years. 

Ivan Vyrypaev’s Illusions translated by Cazimir Liske and directed at the LANDA Greenhouse Festival by Irina Mikheeva recalls Amsterdam, performed here in 2019. That is, in its storytelling structure involving four actors, the way it repeats key lines litanically, and shared narration slipping between them to a dynamic choreography also devised by Mikheeva.

Sandy (Emily Tidey) has been married happily to Denny (James Walsh) for 53 years. Denny makes a deathbed confession of total fidelity: how Sandy helped him become the man he was, living in reciprocal love. Touching. He dies happy. 

A year on and Sandy dying, confesses to Denny’s best friend Albert (Samuel Ferrer) she’s loved him all along but he was already happily married to Margaret (Thelma Georgiou). Albert is poleaxed: now he thinks he was never in love with Margaret and tells her. He also capriciously returns to Sandy and tells her that Denny was in love with Margaret (true, ever-truthful Denny confessed it early on, but only to Albert). And that they’d had an affair: not true. Because like Margaret Albert has a sense of humour: Margaret’s defining line. Quite what that is comes as a shock.

A subtle play about the illusions of love: what it is, how notions of our basic happiness can be inverted and skewed even at the point of death. The chain reaction from Sandy through Albert with the stakes getting higher for the three left are deftly related, with an almost laconic charm. Illusions wears its profundity and tragedies lightly, like a tale.

The playful quality is kept airborne by four consummate young actors who invest their roles with wit and warmth: above all this ensemble sings in a self-communing playfulness. 

Grace Rumsey’s designs are different to those in Revolt. Here all is hallucinatory and pristine mythic, with (again) Ghoti Fisher’s lighting clean, heightening the effect. Aidan Gibson’s sound arrives with a retrained sense of occasion.

Rumsey’s props like a white doll’s house, a rock in Australia (Denny’s midlife crisis), and floating pink ribbon stain the white like iridescent moments. Illusions impresses here as an illuminating fable.

Thelma Georgiou Emily Tidey James Walsh Samuel Ferrer

Writer Ivan Vyrypaev Director Irina Mikheeva Set and Costume Designer Grace Rumsey Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer Aidan Gibson Movement & Choreography Irina Mikheeva Stage Manager Holly Higgs

debbie tucker green Dirty Butterfly

“Ever woke up thinkin’ this day is gonna be your last? … Like a butterfly gone wrong…” Debbie tucker green’s 2003 debut Dirty Butterfly directed by Robert Fury explodes with assurance. 

Even given tucker green’s stage management experience this is already the dramatist we know, distilled with fast-flowing dialogue. 

A world of bleak, reluctant acts of kindness chafes at grudges over suspicion and guilt. How do you respond to a young woman’s violent abuse? And is she even reaching out or taunting voyeurs?

Joanne (Cassie Clark) is screaming on the other side of the wall. Neighbour Amelia (Amanda Ibadin) is furious her partner prison warden Jason (Abimbola Ikengboju) listens in. Voyeurism, professional reflex, even compassion. It doesn’t cut it with either Joanne or Amelia.

Anna Dell Bradford’s evocative prison-like white brick wall occludes one or two protagonists from half the audience (perhaps semi-transparent might work) but it vanishes a little over halfway through. The cast wear white; this has dramatic consequences.

Furey and the cast deliver a first-rate production. Ibadin is particularly fine in both her railing and later on, a denial of her own reluctant compassion. What is it bonds these women? Possibly the very blood Joanne can’t contain. 

Ikengboju mimics the suffering he’s obsessed by. As his delusions are stripped, you wonder if he’s traumatised, possesses degrees of empathy beyond whatever turns him on. Curled into a ball, howling and ultimately mute, his absence latterly clears a space you realise he’s occupied. Ikengboju invests Jason with residual humanity.

There’s tenebrous blue shifts and daylights for Abhinav Mishra’s lighting to tell, Elise Layton’s movement in constant flow as the characters circle each other on each side. But Isabel Buchanan’s sound wittily takes Layton’s challenge to produce a synth Bolero to make Jason’s and Amelia’s rare communion, in a dance absurd and touching. 

Clark, explosively vocal in the first 60% of the show, exhibits agency as a shattered woman in the latter part. Ibadin and Clark are superlative now the shouting’s over; tiny acts are twisted, ultimately accepted. But Jo’s opening words haunt. Clark shudders them out like a hand smearing blooded letters on a white wall.

Furey and team have paced this from velocity to stillness. A closed wall gives away to an open space with tea-trolley and cleaning equipment. It’s where things break in their own time. And keep shattering to the last moment. Stunning.

Abimbola Ikengboju Amanda Ibadin Cassie Clark

Writer debbie tucker green Director Robert Furey Set and Costume Designer Anna Dell Bradford Lighting Designer Abhinav Mishra Sound Designer Isabel Buchanan Movement Director Elize Layton Voice Director Molly Parker Stage Manager Patrick McAneny

Sam Holcroft Pink                      

US entrepreneur and former porn star Kim brushes herself and brushes off TV PA Amy before her big TV interview. She’s surprised by Bridget. The prime minister. Sam Holcroft’s Pink, a 40 minute play directed by Anna Sharp, leans more to Holcroft’s world of A Mirror than Rules for Living. But the same structural volte-faces in both are compressed into a thrilling face-off next to a make-up mirror.

Amy (a neatly anxious Daisy Tallulah Hargreaves) does have about five minutes after nearly three with Kim (Madison Coppola) adorning herself. And after admiration fails, Amy gets a final judgement in after being slighted. Dan (Samuel Ferrer from Illusions) has such a brief silent role as security that in some productions an ASM might work.

Moving from leonine dismissal to mild surprise through outrage and proud defiance, Coppola is consummate as the porn star now bestriding the world like a pink colossus. There’s an intimate reason too. 

That’s why British PM Bridget (suave and stiletto smiling Ellie Larkin) has come. Her husband has been dipping himself into that pink and it’s all over the tabloids. Bridget is more interested in making an extraordinary proposal Kim thinks she can decline. But. 

Krysia Mikllejski’s set comprising hollow dress mirror and a singular prop is all imagination needs. Abhimav Mishra deploys most light effects round the mirror. Aidan Gibson (sound) deploys Meredith Brooks’ Bitch)and there’s brief calls for Sam Goodchild’s intimacy direction and Gurkiran Kaur’s voice. 

The cast are consummate and Larkin, a younger svelte Theresa May cut in glass incises words like a delicacy she’s called upon to eat at a summit. 

Always coiled, Larkin carries the demeanour of an MI5 chief. Bridget’s plight recalls that of a Blairite woman Labour minister but Bridget’s not so concerned with that past, but what the future should be. It shocks Kim: the opposite of anything she could have predicted.

Sharp scorches though this play with every beat constant and not a ministerial hair out of place. The tension generated makes you forget the material is tight and unremitting, focused on one topic, humour its only leaven. Its switchbacks thrill and surprise – and frequently provokes laughter. A tribute to the whole team.

Madison Coppola Daisy Tallulah Hargreaves Ellie Larkin Samuel Ferrer

Writer Sam Holcroft Director Anna Sharp Set and Costume Designer Krysia Milejski Lighting Designer Abhinav Mishra Sound Designer Aidan Gibson Intimacy Director Sam Goodchild Voice Coach Gurkiran Kaur TSM Jessie Potts

Lila Rose Kaplan Biography of a Constellation

Andromeda’s having an off day. Lila Rose Kaplan’s 2006 Biography of a Constellation is centred on the lives of three women. An enchanting but wryly feminist play of affirmation and persistent wit, it’s directed by Paloma Sierra.

Andromeda starts simply. Her mother Cassiopeia (Grace Wallis) for vanity has been punished by having to sacrifice her daughter Princess Andromeda (Phoenix Edwards) by chaining her to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster: which she blithely does.

Luckily Perseus (Roy Mas) rescues Andromeda, sets her in the stars and asks to paint her. Andromeda though wants a job. Without her hands bound.

Anne Cannon photo Credit Orange Tree Theatre

Elsewhere Wallis the archivist and astronomer Anne Cannon (Wallis’ main role on stick and lorgnettes) aged 133 comes across Mas as a young wandering astronomer with a cello who’s also (in a blink) Harvard Professor of Astronomy Gregory. Her grandson. And he’s meant to be writing her obituary. She’s only just read her death notice.

Trouble is Gregory’s not using pencils which are the rules down here, she reminds him. Anne has made huge discoveries, starting from the days when women were used as human computers. She’s mapped things about Andromeda no-one suspects. Gregory also plays cello and both wield a tripod-bound telescope to underscore their passion.

Planetarium presenter Sarah (Kathleen Irvine) exasperated at the drivel she’s asked to spout to stop anyone asking questions, turns an increasingly eccentric orbit: the explainer slowly gone peregrine. 

How this all dances around 75 minutes can dazzle and diffuse, but it’s pulled together by Sierra and her cast, in a celestial ballet (of voices too) from Lyra Mackenzie, that makes sense of the triple storyline, etched-in characters and boppy dialogue. Profundity turns on how these orbit and charm.

Ghoti Fisher’s lighting renders the space a planetarium. Jana Lakatis conjures 1930s evening dresses and drapes as well as over one exit, with props to suspend us between myths and a smart New York suburb (puppetry too from Emma McGrath.)

There’s a careful harmony of the spheres. Summer Collier’s sound (sourcing Holst’s Mercury) with Abhinav Mishra’s original music on cello (Alasdair Linn deftly taking it up) or in rising chords. Everyone’s firmly from New York (dialect David Jarzan) unless they’re up in the stars.

Kaplan’s play wears its themes lightly. Sierra’s team get it just right.

Kathleen Irvine Phoenix Edwards Grace Wallis Roy Mas

Writer Lila Rose Kaplan Director Paloma Sierra Set and Costume Designer Jana Lakatos Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer Summer Collier Movement & Voice Director Lyra MacKenzie Composer Abhinav Mishra Intimacy Director Sam Goodchild Puppet Maker Emma McGrath Cellist Alasdair Linn Dialect Coach David Jarzen TSMs Anya Williams Elisabetta Perrotta

Shakespeare/Ilona Sell MSND                              “

No more waking than a theme. In a distillation of the Dream, Ilona Sell with dramaturg Florence Winkley crafts a 75 minute compression of Shakespeare’s parent and original, new bent like Artemis’ bow on the experiences of Helena and Hernia. 

By confronting the harsh Athenian law, Hermia’s possible death penalty, references to rape and female servitude, Sell and Winkley strip out the Rude Mechanicals and the court play. What we’re left with is raw confusion, betrayals of love, sexual danger. 

As realised in this compression it’s bewitching and balletic (movement Rebecca Justins) and as a version has a future.

With a seven-strong cast, several multi-roling, with Ruby Aston’s design featuring flowing light garments and bare feet on a simple red ground, there’s no clutter. Ghoti Fisher’s lighting tracks colours of court and forest but most, moods of protagonists. A brief appearance of an ass’s head is the only fixation. 

It’s light on sound too: hints of strangeness are scolloped in. Aiden Gibson channels Lori Anderson’s O Superman‘s first O, in a mocking immanence. Intimacy is lightly etched by Yarit Dor no less.

Brooke Bazarian impresses straight away as Helena, the truth of her plight, the thinking behind it exuding distress and hapless devotion. Hers is a fully-fledged performance where half lights and bewilderment register.

Mandisa Baleni hits her stride as soon as her Hermia strikes the woods. More playful than Helena can be, Baleni’s wit and fire ignite here.

Everyone else catches fire too. Ella Boyes bursts from her constraints as Hippolyta (there’s little backstory here, no time to show her own plight) and as Titania is regal and passionate when waking from her flowery bed. As the ‘quarrel’ with Oberon is removed, their confrontation works as Oberon’s oppression: the scene glints menace.

George Solomou exudes urbanity as Theseus and command as Oberon, with a keen use of language. A natural Shakespearean. Nigel Sudarkasa’s Lysander is far more heroic than callow with a ringing poetry. 

Spin Glancy isn’t the darkest of Demetriuses (though he dwells on threats to Helena, brought out here) but invests him with grace, so his transformation is the more convincing.

Shedding his Egeus, Kofi Odoom delights in Puck. He breathes mischief and bafflement in equal measure. His delight and final speech dispels something of the condensed threat we’ve witnessed. There is though a mute aftermath.

To develop this further, more air round the threats might be highlighted, the shock even more time to land. The final scene with shadowed looks between women suggests ways forward. But that’s only to judge by the highest standard. 

Mounting an ambitious showcase with a seven-strong ensemble, Sell proves she, like each director, is ready to loose arrows.

Mandisa Baleni Brooke BazarianNigel SudarkasaSpin GlancyElla BoyesGeorge SolomouKofi Odoom

Director Ilona Sell Set and Costume Designer Ruby Aston Lighting Designer Ghoti Fisher Sound Designer  Aidan Gibson Fight & Intimacy Coordinator Yarit Dor Dramaturg Florence Winkley Movement Director Rebecca Justins Sound Assistant Joe Harrington TSM Jessie Potts

Greenhouse Festival LAMDA Festival New Directors in association with Orange Tree

Every one of these productions could enjoy a run at the Orange Tree: they’re exciting and accomplished.

Orange Tree Theatre in Association with LAMDA

Orange Tree Theatre Richmond

http://www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk

The Greenhouse Festival LAMDA Festival of New Directors in association with Orange Tree presents six plays, often the early work of established women playwrights. With the exception of Shakespeare who gets a speed-read.

Every one of these productions could enjoy a run at the Orange Tree: they’re exciting and accomplished.

Till September 7^th