Ian McKellen reads a passionate speech by Shakespeare, written in defence of immigrants (reblog)

I’m re-blogging this item from Open Culture because it deserves wide circulation in these times when migrants are told they’re unwelcome, when borders are manned and walls are being built, when the Dutch prime minister says, ‘Behave normally or go away‘, and when outsiders are attacked or vilified. And because today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

Little Englanders, Brexiters, Daily Mail keep them out and send them home types: these are the words of Shakespeare, our national poet and treasure. Worth a listen?

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The RSC’s high-tech Tempest: acting, poetry and technology spellbind together

Another splendid evening this week in our local Picturehouse last week watching the RSC’s dazzling staging of The Tempest, featuring magnificent and memorable performances by Simon Russell Beale as Prospero and Mark Quartley as Ariel. This is the production that utilises performance capture technology from Imaginarium Studios to render Ariel’s animated avatar live in three dimensions on the Stratford stage. Brilliant as the special effects were, it was the acting which held us spellbound.

Anthony Sher dazzles in the RSC’s King Lear

For the first time, we overcame scepticism and joined a packed house at FACT, our local Picturehouse to watch the RSC production of King Lear streamed live from Stratford. It was a revelation; we were completely blown away by the experience, which was not at all like watching TV but instead felt totally immersive, like being there in the audience and on stage at the same time. I particularly appreciated being able to hear every word spoken and see details of costumes and facial expressions of the actors.

All of which is merely a preamble to praise for the production itself: Anthony Sher was outstanding as Lear, while the entire cast burned just as bright. Directed by Gregory Doran, the staging and costumes were magnificent, making this a truly memorable production of the Shakespeare play I have seen more times than any other.

As You Like It in Chester’s Grosvenor Park: magical despite the rain

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.

There are reasons, I guess, why I am so bewitched by Shakespeare’s pastoral dramas, notably the great good fortune of an untrammelled fifties childhood in rural Cheshire, and then coming of age amidst the swirl of hippie values in the sixties – waving the flag for peace and love, rejecting materialism, and yearning to get back to nature.

The pastoral vision of a lost world of innocence and the simpler life of the countryside, with its potential for love and renewal, flowered in this year’s production of As You Like It at Chester’s open air Grosvenor Park Theatre. In the last few years it’s become a summer Shakespeare ritual for me and my daughter to chance the English weather and take our seats in the terraces (some covered, others not) of this theatre in the round.

Filter Theatre’s riotous Twelfth Night

Filter Theatre’s Twelfth Night, seen on Saturday at Theatre Clwyd, is like no other production of Shakespeare’s much-loved comedy you have ever seen. Purists might hate it, but Filter’s radically-cut, fast-paced version of the play is hugely enjoyable, and every word is the Bard’s. At little more than 90 minutes this is a distilled essence of Twelfth Night. The audience in Mold loved it.

A stripped-back Winter’s Tale from Northern Broadsides

Conrad Nelson’s production of The Winter’s Tale for Northern Broadsides is the most stripped-back production I’ve seen. We saw it performed in the round at the New Victoria Theatre in Stoke where the stage was bare, but for an occasional  bench or something similar.

The result is to focus attention on Shakespeare’s words and symbolism – and on the quality of the acting which, as always with Northern Broadsides, was very high indeed with notable performances by Conrad Nelson himself in the role of Leontes, Ruth Alexander as Paulina, Mike Hugo as Autolycus, and Jessica Dyas and Lauryn Redding as the sparring peasant girls Mopsa and Dorcas.

The Merry Wives of Windsor in Chester’s Grosvenor Park: a touch of the 1970s

Watching The Merry Wives of Windsor at Grosvenor Park open air theatre in Chester the other evening, I wondered why this Shakespeare comedy is so rarely performed. As always, the Grosvenor company put on a terrific show – fast-paced, multi-sensory, and packed with music and comedy. We couldn’t have asked for a more entertaining three hours of theatre – and on one of the warmest evenings of this dreary summer.

Romeo and Juliet in Calderstones Park: teenage hysteria

The drizzle, it seemed, was determined to droppeth as the rain from heaven for some time, but heaven’s mercy prevailed to allow for a mainly dry performance of Romeo and Juliet by a wandering troupe from the Globe Theatre in Calderstones Park.

Still, nothing – least of all a bit of rain – comes in the way of Britons determined to enjoy a bit of Shakespeare. People were togged up in  hooded anoraks, waterproof rugs and warming flasks of something or other as the travelling players wandered around, joking with the audience before the performance started with a song and dance – just as it would in Shakespeare’s time.

Northern accents in Jonathan Miller’s King Lear

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Jonathan Miller’s touring production of King Lear for Northern Broadsides arrived at the Playhouse this week. It’s a stark, pared-down staging of Shakespeare’s starkest play, in which the weight of suffering at times feels almost as unendurable for the audience as it is for its characters.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Everyman: darkness on the edge of town

There’s a darkness on the edge of town. A place of misrule and disruptive magic that in Shakespeare’s day incited dark fears and dreams of wild abandon. The Everyman production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, seen on the penultimate night of its successful run, helped me appreciate for the first time the darker side of Shakespeare’s timeless comedy.

Filtered Macbeth at the Everyman

I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?

On Saturday afternoon we were at the Everyman to see the Filter Theatre production of Macbeth that was passing through, on tour.  Filter have gained a reputation for innovative and exciting theatre since 2003, and this was certainly no routine presentation of what is one of the most familiar of Shakespeare’s plays. I learnt the play as an O-level text, and have seen it performed two or three times since, including Trevor Nunn’s 1974 production at Stratford, a sort of Jacobean black Mass with Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren as the murderous couple. Filter’s is a cut-down 75-minute version that might be difficult to follow if you are unfamiliar with the play.

The Comedy of Errors in Chester’s Grosvenor Park

Picnics before the show

Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advised?

I had no idea what to expect, setting out for Chester with my daughter to see Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors at the Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre. What we got was a rambunctious, athletic and immensely enjoyable take on Shakespeare’s joyous and deliriously madcap farce.

We were lucky with the weather, too.  Although we had covered seats, we would have got wet had it rained, which had seemed a real possibility during downpours that morning.  This week’s rain and cooler temperatures have left the warm, sunny days of June and July a memory: in his Country Diary in the Guardian, Paul Evans wrote that ‘the swifts had left, switching summer off behind them’.  But, on Tuesday evening, the skies cleared and left us dry.

I now know that the Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre is the only full-time professional open air theatre company outside London – and that, since being founded in 2010, it has garnered critical acclaim, being described as the ‘the northern alternative to Shakespeare’s Globe and Regent’s Park’ by the Guardian.  The company’s director, Alex Clifton, is gaining a reputation for imaginative productions, too.

One of the great things about open-air theatre is the picnic.  At Grosvenor Park you can bring your picnic to consume before the show – or during it. We settled down to our comestibles, fortified by Prosecco and red wine from the hospitality tent which also serves home-made cakes, tea and coffee.  At first, I mistakenly took the wooden structure, seen to the right of the main performance space in the photo above, to be the cafe – menus were displayed, there were red check tablecloths and a big sign offered TEA. Oddly, though, this turned out to be a stage prop, representing the house of Antipholus of Ephesus, from which he is barred, seemingly by his own servant.

The wife of Antipholus of Ephesus with one or other of the Dromios

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare’s early plays, a farcical comedy, drenched in slapstick, mistaken identities, puns and word play. Alex Clifton emphasises the slapstick, in a wild and athletic production which feels like watching an animated cartoon.  Like gymnasts, the cast are constantly running, jumping, skipping and falling, even at one stage suffering the indignities of a very messy food fight.

Clifton isn’t the first to incorporate anachronistic music into a Shakespearian production: the story is constantly interrupted by players with saxophones, guitars and a big bass drum careering around the stage doing karaoke versions of songs by Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears and others. Curiously, however, when the play begins, it is with older sing-a-long classics like ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, ‘Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner’ and ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’.  This was not a promising start, and went on a bit too long for my taste.

Egeon’s sad story animated

However, we were soon hurled pell-mell into Shakespeare’s improbable story.  The lengthy explanation by elderly Syracusian trader Egeon as to how he comes to be in Ephesus, and now faces execution, is conveyed in very clever staging. As Egeon tells his sad story – of the loss by shipwreck of his own twin sons (both named Antipholus: why?) and the twin boy slaves (the two Dromios), the actors  amusingly animate his account, cartoon-style, atop the set.

Syracusan merchant doomed to die!

From that point on, the pace was relentless – a succession of wildly enjoyable, laugh-out-loud set pieces.  As Michael Green wrote in his review for the Chester Chronicle:

It is no exaggeration to say that every single member of the cast is absolutely magnificent but I can’t resist drawing attention … to the incredible talents of identical twin sisters Danielle and Nichole Bird who play the two Dromios. Not only is their comic timing bordering on the supernatural, they are real forces of nature, demonstrating an energy that leaves you feeling exhausted just watching them. There were a number of times when they were having to pull off scenes of difficult physical comedy while continuing to spout some pretty complex dialogue and heaven only knows how much ground they had covered by the end of the show.

The cast were all excellent. Thomas Richardson was good as Antipholus of Syracuse, offering a convincing balance of comedy and innocence in his character. However, those Bird twins really stole the show with such energetic performances that we in the audience were left gasping (by the end, the pair themselves must have been knackered).

Not one, but two Antipholuses – reunited with Mum

There was one particularly mad moment when all the characters were running manically from one side of the performance area to the other, joined in the melee by completely incongruous characters.  Michael Green’s review explains:

The lengthiest example of this process could possibly be my own personal highlight of the entire summer in the park as the director has the audacity to throw characters from Macbeth and The Secret Garden into a crazy chase scene of which the Keystone Cops would have been proud!  This lovely in-joke was a charming reward for anyone in the audience who had been loyal enough to catch up with all three productions in what has been another triumphant year for the Chester Performs-led project.

We both enjoyed Shakespeare’s punning in the scene where Dromio of Syracuse describes the kitchen-maid in the household of Antipholus of Ephesus:

No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip; she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her.

Ireland is in her buttocks: ‘I found it out by the bogs’. America and the Indies he found ‘upon her nose all o’er embellished with rubies, carbuncles’.‘ And where stood Belgium, the Netherlands?  ‘Oh, sir, I did not look so low.‘

The play concludes in one of Shakespeare’s most feel-good endings with Dromio of Ephesus indicating to his brother that now they have been freed from servitude, they no longer need to be one step behind another:

Let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.