Cymbeline by the Ninagawa Company @ London's Barbican

Backstage on stage - a sharp opening to a stunning spectacle

The Ninagawa Company present their pre-show rituals in full view of the Barbican's largely Japanese audience, the cast thereby sharing their humanity but also reminding the spectator that beneath the apparently nonchalant yet beautiful rehearsal kimonos reside some of William Shakespeare's less well encountered characters prepping to take the stage and play the contrived and up-beat tale of Cymbeline.

A sudden shedding of the actors' dressing room attire and a most warming welcome bow as the company in full period costume assemble front of stage, counted as one of the strongest moments of the play, which ran for over three hours filled with much passion, stunning scenery, live and recorded sound and music, but also much appreciated comic relief moments from the likes of Cloten and Pisanio, without which the plot may have been lost to the drawn out dramatic pauses, the sometimes loud and exaggerated interpretations of joy, anger, happiness and fear - a lot like human renditions of on screen caricatural Japanese TV animations from the 90ies. This impression might have also been attributable to the fact that the lead actors playing Posthumus (Hiroshi Abe) and Imogen (Shinobu Otake) are exceptional TV and film actors.

There was an admirable marrying of Japanese and western culture by means of mixing scenic decors providing a haunting sense that Shakespeare's masterpiece is far from tainted by inter-cultural differences and language. Through the humanity of the piece and the players, Shakespeare pierces through the taboos set by society: Shakespeare truly is universal.

As a spectacle Ninagawa's stage directions are lively and very much, it seems, inspired by some of the work of the RSC and, in particular, two immensely beautiful and skilfully achieved "slow motion" sequences: one of war and one of celebration - demonstrating the agility of the actors as a company of players in intense moments of heightened emotion and tension to convey the meanings underlying the text with beauty, clarity and complete truth.

Cate Blanchett in Gross und Klein at London's Barbican

Breathtaking

Gross und Klein (Big and Small)

by Botho Strauss

English text by Martin Crimp

Starring  Cate Blanchett 

directed by Benedict Andrews

performed by the Sidney Theatre Company

 22 April 2012 @ Barbican Theatre, London

A stunning and sometimes sad tale of a search for  human connection 

 

With deeply rooted and committed character choices, Cate Blanchett invites her spectators to join thetrials and tribulations of her character Lotte, offering them a genuine sense of communion, understanding and empathy. Cate Blanchett breathes and assimilates the space both on and off stage and integrates her audience to her life and her dream-like surroundings of mobile features such as whilte walls at angles with doors and windows opening into the vacuous black space, a brightly lit glass phone booth or a tall residential building entrance equipped with a functionning interpone through which Lotte communicates, all of which intermittantly pierce through the otherwise empty darkness of the Barbican stage.

The cast of the Sidney Theatre Company is solid, meeting the expectations of the text, which presents a variety of Lotte's  friends, strangers, lovers and family alike, with a sense of detachment not unlike apparitions, memories or characters within tormented dreams emerging from Lotte's youthful, enthusiastic and determined subconscious. These characters do not distract at any point from the stage and play centre-piece enacted truthfully by Cate Blanchett, whom the audience embraces and follows unconditionally even beyond the stagedoor after the close of the play.

The undefiable emotionally charged and grounded determination to pursue her life in all serenity despite repeated set-backs, fruitless and sometimes conflictual encounters, is a testament to Lotte's stamina as a human being in the face of life's challenges. This rendition is made so compelling, primarily thanks to Cate Blanchett's high standard of acting, immeasurable stage presence and full, warm and honest voice that all carry the audience as if floating through space, weightless and being left to move in symbiosis with the temperamental bout's of Lotte's adventure.

A truly stunning performance.

Cillian Murphy in Misterman at London's National Theatre

Poignant - brilliantly executed

Misterman

Written and directed by Enda Walsh

Starring Cillian Murphy

21 April 2012 @ the Lyttelton – National Theatre, London, UK

A poignant snap of a God-ridden life in rural Ireland

Following a raging success at the 2011 Galway Arts Festival, Enda Walsh  brings the new version of his Misterman to the Lyttelton stage and a largely Irish London crowd.

Under Enda Walsh’s direction Cillian Murphy, provided with a salubrious yet splendidly vast and dynamic space to fill, does so, enacting the endearing, unknowingly witty and somewhat unusual young evangelist Thomas Magill from Inishfree. He reverberates a mesmerizing web of emotion and action accompanied by tremendous drive and energy for the entire 90 minutes of this audiovisual feast.

Not one second, not one audience member from the stalls and all the way up to the Gods, is spared a tailored vision of the spectacle with lights, sounds, movement and gigantic God-like shadows of the sometimes maniacal and erratic Thomas Magill on his mission to put the evil Inishfree world, as he sees it, to right. 

Cillian Murphy offers a most stunningly heartfelt, honest and gripping performance with a pace and fluidity so compelling that the audience is engrossed in Thomas’ world of reality as well as imaginary visions and voices, so much so that the non-existent characters he creates or hears become real to the spectator’s eye and ear, not only through Cillian Murphy’s immaculate ability to manipulate each character’s diverging Irish accents and physicalities magnificently with immense skill and clarity, but also by literally following the visions of Thomas’ mind’s eye in their imagined physical movements, as if they are materially as real as his surroundings. 

The detail in the set design and coordination throughout the flickering throes of Thomas’ re-enactments of excerpts of his life, encounters and conversations, or visions thereof, either recounted by himself or recorded and played back with pristine timing, reflects a most high standard of production management by Landmark Productions.

The set, a jaw dropping voluminous, decadent and deceptively full, dusty, rusty and musty disused warehouse with all the trimmings, is incredibly responsive to Thomas’ assaults such as repeated, impulsive and dysfunctional object throwing, kicking and hitting. The set itself lives and has such genuine features that it is difficult to believe Thomas is amid a sea of props, on a stage supporting a 30ft wide and deep concrete surface, reposing on imposing angular concrete pillars 10ft high, which in effect, splits the space horizontally. Given the Godly-thread of this parable, this vertical separation of the space could be seen as a depiction of the border between Hell and Heaven, on which Enda Walsh places evil angel-like Thomas Magill at the pinnacle and close of the play…

…a finale so dramatic and heart wrenching, so emotionally charged that the audience is dumbstruck and unable to applaud as instantly as one would expect immediately after the closing blackout…a somewhat delayed standing ovation inevitably ensued.