Blood Show @ Battersea Arts Centre

The audience are warned before going in of potential splatter, and offered ponchos. This obviously sets an expectation, which is immediately subverted when we walk into a room where the playing space is pristine and white, the performers wearing clean white outfits, while one performer lounges in a chair, covered in fake blood. As we wait for the show to begin, La Roux’s The Kill plays on loop, and I wonder about how the actor managed to get into the white jumpsuit and not get it covered in blood, which drips from the toe that dangles over the edge of the white chair, onto the white floor. 

The early movements of the performance are set to silence; there is a ghost (which turns to highly comedic effect later on) and two performers, dressed in white. One covered in blood, one face made up like a ghost in a pantomime. The choreographed movements of a fight ensue, the fight becoming more graphic but also more performative in each repeat of the cyclical choreography. The actors vocalise at first, and in later “rounds” are accompanied by music. As they move through the space the pristine white is tarnished, with the mess expanding and getting increasingly absurd as they go on. 

There is an element of duration at play, as we witness nothing explicitly happening, while it is clear that the meaning of the fighting and the ensuing mess is evolving and expanding before our eyes. Without narrative the audience fill the gaps, imbuing meaning to the marks in the floor, the lengths of the pause between fights as the actors prepare again. Were the songs different or the same? Did the cycle of the choreography change intentionally? 

The cycle reaches a pinnacle of absurdity with literal buckets of fake blood dumped on the floor; this is where the production lost me. Earlier moments caused thoughts of our willingness to watch violence on TV and in films so casually, whereas in a live environment it was quite jarring. These final absurd moments while funny, did (for me) take away from the overall feeling of the production. 

Notwithstanding, this was a feat of production; the actors were exceptional in their physical commitment, and the design was clever and inventive, continually surprising the audience with where the blood would come from next. 

Selecting a Ghost @ Stanley Arts Centre

Staged in promenade fashion, Selecting A Ghost uses every possible inch of the Stanley Arts building to tell a brilliantly devised production of the Arthur Conan Doyle story. The audience are positioned as on a tour of the house, so what might be boring exposition is transformed into an adventure to explore the space. A playful urgency is created by the actors as they take us through the space, with the building transforming from room to room. Some audience members get to partake in a ghost chase, and there are light moments of interaction which are respectful of audience boundaries while still making us feel engaged in the action. 

As the production moves into bigger spaces in the building, the lighting and sound are quite inventively used - even the lift is a delight, as we see an actor rising up (to delightful comic effect) as we in the audience walk up the stairs. Lighting is used cleverly to direct our attention and create new spaces at times, without moving the audience. 

The final phase of the production where we meet the ghosts is beautifully conceived, using the text and dubstep to create an almost X-Factor ghost audition for the audience. The choreography is captivating and the use of this bigger space coupled with sound and light is inventive and fun. 

The two lead performers (Edward Bennet and Jade Williams) do a brilliant job taking us on the journey, with a special shout out to the actor who plays the wife along with at least 3 other characters through a fantastic physical transformation. They are supported by 4 dancers who play the ghosts, all of whom were captivating. 

Immersive 1984 @ Hackney Town Hall

Presented in the epic and imposing surroundings of Hackney Town Hall, 1984 attempts to translate the sprawling and intense novel into a production of about an hour. Upon arrival you are provided a number badge and some instructions, then invited into the main hall space where there is a bar, and 2 performers singing country-folk inspired music. From here the production begins, first in the main area, then through additional areas of the space where some information is revealed. There are inklings of participation for the audience when there is some interaction with the performers, and being asked to stand or sit, or move spaces.

However the majority of the production is observed; it is not discovered, the audience are moved around in an orderly fashion. Moments of the story unfold, but often without context or stakes, meaning that it is hard to follow, even for those who know the book well.

The design makes exceptional use of the space, and merges video and live performance to positive effect; the design alone is not enough to create a properly immersive and engaging experience for me, however.

Toto Kerblammo! @ Unicorn Theatre

Toto Kerblammo tells the story of a young girl and her dog, as they navigate a challenging personal situation for her. Faced with a major tragedy and her mother taken to mental hospital, Effy has to move in with her aunt and uncle, where she can’t keep her dog Toto. It centres around the idea of listening — specifically that her dog can hear things she can’t to tell how she is felling. 

The story is told through headphones, creating an intimate atmosphere and one where the mechanism of listening becomes heightened. Moving back and forth through time and in and out of reality, the story unravels for us slowly, and in a really touching way, until we realise that another tragedy has occurred for Effy to move forward from. 

All elements of the production come together to perfection, but in particular, a couple elements stand out.  Tim Crouch’s script deals with intense subject matter, and for a young audience, yet doesn’t shy away from it or simplify it. In fact, there are elements introduced throughout the story which make it beautifully complex and difficult. The way the story unravels is careful to release just the right amout of story as it goes, slowly revealing what is happening and the depths of the situation to the audience. By positioning the story of this young girl’s emotional growth around her dog and what the dog can hear, with the overwhelming theme of listening, the audience are able to achieve a psychical distance and objectivity to the story while still being emotionally impacted by it. This is a beautiful story, well told — for audiences of all ages. 

And secondly, the sound design by Helen Skiera is truly exceptional, if relentless. The audio is playful and evocative — it creates closeness, and distance, builds spaces and changes times despite next to no change in the physical space. The layers to the sound design really emphasise the elements of the story and elevate them. The elements of sound design work together to create an intimacy between the audience, actors, and story.

Go see this.

NOWHERE - Fuel Theatre @ Battersea Arts Centre

Where are we safe? Khalid Abdalla’s solo show leaves nothing untouched in its challenge to the audience. Blending personal history with the politics that overshadow it, Khalid takes us through his family’s history as it relates to revolt, colonialism, and the current imperialist ventures in the West Bank and Palestine.

If it sounds heavy, it is - at times. But at times it is also darkly funny, light, playful, and despite the darkness, filled with hope.

Director Omar Elerian uses a brilliant blend of media to bring us this story - projections of old photographs, video which is and is not live (and it hard to tell when it transitions), and perhaps most movingly, images on a phone. To give the audience a story about contemporary uprisings which are made possible in many ways by the smartphone, which we far away primarily learn about through our phones, is nothing short of genius.

The play moves at a blistering pace and yet feels gentle, thoughtful. The performance, production, and script all come together in the most beautiful way, that the audience are left a little breathless, a little teary, and completely reminded of why we make theatre. This. This is why.

THE BELT - Ambiguous Dance Company @ The Coronet Theatre

The Belt, from Korea’s Ambiguous Dance Company, is a two-part event.

First, Past, is a site specific exploration of identity through repetitive movement, with 6 short performances which take place across different areas of The Coronet theatre. Billed as “immersive” i would argue the label does the work a disservice. Instead it is site-specific, with the movements inspired by the spaces, and vice versa. Throughout this section the audience are moved around the space by guides - this is a bit unceremonious, and moved at an intense pace (so much so that my group lost people more than once). Nonetheless the pieces were thought provoking in their own right.

Second, Future, takes the ideas of durational performance and boredom from contemporary theatre and places them into the context of dance. Situated in the main performance space at the Coronet, and lasting over an hour, the company perform a non-stop piece of choreography to a continuous techno DJ set. This on its own is exciting, however coupled with a movement vocabulary which challenges perfection, it is quite thrilling overall picture. The movement takes classical dance movement and muddies it, making it look like street or club dancing….while still underscored by strong technique and precision (despite looking to the untrained eye completely imprecise). The sheer endurance of the piece is breathtaking.

A delightful evening, which challenged multiple preconceptions.

Cinderella @ Watford Palace Theatre

You might not believe this, given the regular content around here, but we love a panto. When you think about the array of theatre experiences, panto is an entry point for thousands of people; for many kids it is their first experience of the theatre. A panto is silly, irreverent, funny, weird, and wonderful at its best.

This year’s offering from The Watford Palace had an enjoyable premise; riding the current 90’s trend, it sets Cinderella in 1990’s Watford. There are discmans, political references, and a magical furby. Some elements of this work well — the ugly stepsisters as Britney and Xtina (with Xtina in drag) are very funny, if uneven performances. Cinderella as the future popstar bringing future music is great. However the music choices do not consistently fit the theme, and at times the story and performances as a whole flag — the overall slingshot energy of the show through to the end needed work.

Overall though, the children (and lets be honest, most adults) in the audience had a delightful time that will stick with them. And isn’t that the point?

Good by C.P. Taylor @ Harold Pinter (West End)

The performances are extraordinary. A three-hander where two of the actors play at least 10 characters each (we had lost track by the interval) while one plays a single character who changes — or does he simply become more of who he was to begin with?

C. P. Taylor’s 1982 play presents the story of John Halder (David Tennant), a German professor whose ideas about sociology and psychology are picked up by the Nazis and used to justify all manner of heinous acts. The play doesn’t let Halder off the hook, depicting how he abandons his (Jewish) best friend, mentally ill mother, wife and children, as he is slowly taken into the Nazi machine. A machine which “values” his ideas and makes him feel a part of something, appealing to what has been missing throughout his life on the edges. Tennant’s performance is incredible and nuanced - his simplicity underscores the apparent normalcy of these early connections with the National Socialist party, and helps the audience see a man who lies to himself about what is going on around him to justify personal gains.

What is perhaps frustrating about the play in 2022, however, is that although it doesn’t let Halder get off without our judgement, it also didn’t seem to condemn him clearly either. The symbolism in Dominic Cooke’s direction was beautiful - a cell like room where fire comes through opening doors, books are burned, and ultimately Jewish prisoners playing their instruments as he enters a concentration camp to survey his work.

However, this felt too easy - the same way we have seen these images over and over again, to the point where I wonder whether we are de-sensitized as a society. We continue to see individuals - similarly “lonely” and “misunderstood” young white men are taken into belief systems every day, and increasingly in society we see these men acting out with violence against oppressed groups who are only just beginning to see equality. What could (or should?) this production look like in the time of incels and Qanon? And why isn’t that the production we got?

Again, this isn’t to say that the production wasn’t good - the performances were exceptional, the set symbolic and effective; and yet, it lacked a messiness and left me thinking about how much more impact this script, with this star, could have had today.

Titus Andronicus - The Complete Works Tabletop Shakespeare at Home - Forced Entertainment

I watched this via Forced Entertainment’s Youtube channel - the Complete Works Tabletop Edition is available through November 30th.

I’ll admit it: i love the ridiculousness of Jacobean drama. I find it so much more fun and silly than the more serious and self important poetry of the Elizabethan period. I love to think about ways to stage these ridiculous scenes, the gory fights and tricks on one’s enemy.

What was best about the Forced Entertainment Tabletop version is that really, we just got those best bits - the crappy way these humans behave to one another, the silliness of revenge. Despite the serious subject matter I found myself laughing out loud at the absurdity of several moments — moments that would be performed with pathos by a human, but when represented by a goblet or a beer bottle, are revealed for their triviality. Perhaps even the triviality of the supposed “big” moments in theatre as a whole, and even more so, of humans in general, in this year when really no one is thriving, but we are all just working to stay alive.

I was on a panel earlier this year, where I was probably in the minority as someone who think that the stories are what are exciting in Shakespeare. I mean yeah, the language is beautiful but sometimes it is just a lot. In that discussion, I tried to raise this series as an example of reasons people shouldn’t be intimidated by Shakespeare, but rather embrace the possibilities of the text, the spaces in between what is written down and what we see.

Anyway, if you love stories and objects and people talking, I strongly recommend checking out at least one of the Tabletop Complete works. They are available through November 30th and might just help you divorce yourself from all those feelings of inferiority to the language or story or magnitude of Shakespeare, and remind you that he was just a dude, re-telling some stories.

What The Constitution Means to Me - Heidi Schreck (recorded)

I watched this on Amazon Prime, where it continues to be available. It is a filmed performance from 2019 when the show was performed on Broadway, directed by Marielle Heller.

I have been excited about this play since I first heard Heidi Schreck talk about it on Brian Koppelman’s podcast, The Moment. There is an energy about the way she spoke about the play, and the awe with which Brian described it, that intrigued me. Framed around Schreck’s real life story of travelling around the US debating on the constitution to win prize money to pay for college, what begins as an almost too-real personal confession, quickly spins into a deep and scathing indictment of the treatment of women throughout American history.

Schreck’s performance is singular in its simplicity. She rarely feels performative, even when we see her as her 15 year old self. She is raw and honest in her storytelling. The convention for how the story is told shifts repeatedly, peeling back layers of artifice until we reach the final third of the play which is no longer a play, but a live debate of ideas between two fierce debaters. So rooted in the ancient Greek agon, this is simultaneously the most and least theatrical aspect of the play.

The design is simple, the space does not change but instead the people within the space change and modernize, a stunning metaphor for the old structures which we moden humans must live within, outmoded, but still what we’ve got — the perfect setting for a debate on whether we should continue, or burn it down and start again.

This is a timely watch.

Deer Woman by Tara Beagan @ Downstage Theatre

I watched this play via Downstage Theatre (Calgary) in its recorded form. There are still a handful of showings, through October 18th.

Beagan’s script weaves a stunning story. Lila confesses, we don’t know what to for an excruciatingly wonderful amount of time, in the forest, while moving through stories about her childhood, traumas, her siblings, and more. She is strong. She is funny. She is deadly serious. I won’t give anything away — simply will say that this is a story of strength and taking back power for indigenous women, who are too often pigeonholed and victimized in their representation.

Cherish Violet Blood is a captivating performer, her portrayal of Lila - her eyes burning through the screen to my guts, demanding my attention. Her turns from the serious to the comic or vice versa are beautifully jarring. She shares difficult truths forcefully, yet with a gentle familiarity of someone who is tired of telling these same stories to people who do nothing.

While this has played around the world, this is the first production in Canada — filmed for this moment, it appears, this is one of the best transferences of a play to recording that I have seen. The theatrical device in the play helps - Lila is recording her act - however the production transcends this, to live in a space between what we normally take as “live” and recorded performance.

Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry - National Theatre [Recording - 2016]

I watched this in recording via the National Theatre archive. You can watch it here until July 9.

Although this production was performed in 2016, the positioning of the story by director Yael Farber, the musical choices, every aspect of this production feels like it could have been conceived last week. The set is a skeleton of a house, long and thin, which turns on the revolve. We see through any artifice of this building, as Hansberry’s script and Farber’s searing direction tears away any artifice of these characters, particularly the white inhabitants and perpetrators of the mission.

The story is layered and complex; as time passes, our initial impressions of the characters and their relationships crumble to reveal what each character really is. Farber weaves music through the script, both in live representation via the women who walk in a procession across the stage multiple times, and also from offstage. Even early on, this music rings true and causes us to identify the hollowness of the words and actions of the white colonizers.

The irony of the American journalist coming in to ask questions, challenging what he sees and being confronted by the Africans about the racism rampant in his own country, is even more resonant than could have been anticipated, it seems.

The pace at which this production moves makes it feel like boulder tumbling down a steep hill. It picks up speed, that something terrible is coming feels inevitable and visible, yet we don’t know what. When that thing comes, it is a shock - and the space, the air that follows, feels noxious.

Please make time to watch this.

Chekhov's First Play - Dead Centre [Recorded - 2018]

I watched this in recording, from a 2018 performance in Dublin. Unfortunately it was a limited time, but follow Dead Centre in case they make it available again.

While it is performed live, the audience are provided headsets to listen; this is explained at the onset by the director, who tells us he wants to explain the symbolism and meaning of the production, which can be lost in Chekhov for modern audiences. The audience dutifully put their headphones on, and hear the director’s voice in their ear; first explaining things about Chekhov and the play, but shortly also critiquing the actors, explaining cuts, or complaining of errors. Just at the moment this begins to feel self indulgent, the set begins to fall apart (at one point a literal wrecking ball smashes bits) and the Chekhov that the director had tried so diligently to explain to us has itself fallen apart. We are left with snippets, moments, symbols, the precise opposite of the naturalism so often aligned with Chekhov’s writing, and so much clearer as a result.

I don’t want to give too much away, so won’t say much more, other than to offer a question regarding the audience member who is physically brought into the performance. Clearly this individual is pre-selected and receiving their instruction in a special headset — but what else is different about this individual’s experience? And how is their agency and willingness to be involved to such a degree mediated? Not knowing this, I was concerned about their opportunity to opt-in, to give consent to participate in this manner. Has anyone declined?

This was a really unique production which asks a lot of questions of its audience and material - but did leave me with some. That said, well worth seeing if you have the chance.

Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu - Recorded @ Steppenwolf, Chicago

I watched this on Amazon Prime, after the stage production @ Steppenwolf Theatre Chicago was recorded by Spike Lee and released for viewing. This was recorded in 2017.

Spike Lee sets up the recording of this play beautifully, putting it in the framed context of a group of people travelling by bus, from the neighbourhood where the play takes place, to the theatre. Immediately it is a reminder of the proximity and distance between these two worlds. Danya Taymor’s production gives Antoinette Nwandu’s words space to play. The set (by Wilson Chin) is sparse, wide, dim - yet littered with objects. In this space, the empty street corner, we meet two young men, trapped and isolated, yet surrounded by reminders of the outside world, whether through the objects on the stage, the buzzing streetlamp to indicate day or night, or the more confrontational sounds of gunshots. Despite these reminders, the pair dream and plan, aiming to find a way to a new life. They want more but are aware of the challenges of this world — anxious to start and yet wholly unable to do so. Frozen in their moment.

This is interrupted, however, when the white character arrives - first reflective of seemingly well-intentioned white liberals, careful to choose their words, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, seeking to retain his power and therefore the subjugated position of the two black men. The air itself seemed to change when he entered — the reactions of the two more guarded, more careful, and the possibility of danger more imminent than when bullet sounds threw the pair to the ground. When he leaves, nothing is the same again. Later interactions become increasingly violent — the next white character who enters is a police officer, whose racism is overt, but somehow less sinister than that of the well-intentioned liberal. The two white characters keeping the same name, and are played by the same actor. The elbow of oppression present in all white faces we see on the stage, no matter their stated intentions.

Pass Over weaves together a re-think of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot with biblical imagery, and a bold depiction of the true state of power and racism in today’s world. Despite movement forward, ultimately this story ends worse than it began, and with power in the same place. This was written in response to Trayvon Martin’s death, but could easily have been about the events of the past few weeks.

The manner in which Lee films the stage production makes you feel as if you are a fourth, silent character, sitting behind the street lamp. We are there, we are bearing witness, yet we sit there and do nothing. The complicity is a palpable call to action.

Sea Wall by Simon Stephens [Recorded 2012]

I watched this in recording - it is available here until May 18 for free, or to purchase via www.seawallandrewscott.com

Quarantine is confronting me with many uncanny encounters with scripts I know inside out, as performed in their first production, which due to living in the hinterland, did not get to see. In 2015, I co-directed the Canadian premiere of Sea Wall, featuring the brilliant Rodrigo Beilfuss. I adore Simon’s writing in general, and in particular in this script. It’s powerful imagery, it’s subtle, wave-like rhythms that wash over Alex and the listener, mirroring the way grief creeps in and out of our consciousness.

I had not before seen Andrew Scott’s performance of it. Filmed after the show’s runs in London and Edinburgh, in an empty photography studio, this version of Sea Wall is wonderfully static and contained. Although Andrew moves about the space, the vantage point remains still, fixed. He becomes blurred at times, a beautiful subtlety in the recording which underscores the Alex’s feelings (and our own) of being completely subsumed by the tragedy of the dramatic moment.

One of the things I love best about this script is that although it is extremely active — he is working through his grief — it is also still. All of the action, all of the tension, occurs off stage (in fact, in the past) and rather than seeing things happen, we witness a man dealing with the fall-out of those occurrences, wrestling with his past and what it means for his future. Things that were said. Events that occurred. Loss.

Andrew Scott’s performance is thoughtful, present, and simple. The rawness of the thought process as he works through the events, builds and weaves this story, are breathtaking.

This is some of the finest writing you’ll find, performed to perfection.

I can’t help but compare it to our own interpretation; ours would have likened better, I assume, to the stage presentations in London or Edinburgh, in a small, stuffy, simply lit space. Just an actor, an audience, and this story. One thing that, for me, the recorded version is missing is the collective gasp of realization, the moment when the shoe drops (of what the hell he is even talking about) just over two thirds in. In a room with about 35 other people, the power of that moment literally sucked the oxygen out of the room. You could feel the collective gasp and unwillingness to exhale. The audience completely captivated by this moment, this story - unsure of how to act. Perhaps it is because I watched it with my family (who of course had seen it) but I missed that. That moment, that unwillingness to exhale, as exhalation on the part of the audience is an act of complicity, of needing to see where this story ends, despite already knowing deep down what comes next.

That is the magic of the collective experience.

End Meeting For All - Forced Entertainment

I watched this in recording. You can watch Part 1 here. You can watch Part 2 here. Both are available until June, and Part 3 airs May 12.

Disjointed. Unfocused. Overwhelming.

Forced Entertainment’s End Meeting For All series are improvised public group calls between company members isolated in their homes. Each begins abruptly, and ends abruptly, yet despite the improvisational nature, a structure appears. People ignore others in the call. People get distracted and wander away. People remain deeply focused on a single object or question to the point of irritation. Technology fails (or does it?).

This reflection of our time, when interaction with our closest friends, colleagues, and family members is largely through the blue-white glare of a computer monitor, is stunning. Forced create a piece of performance that is at once anti-performance, and high-performance. We are all living in this recognizable yet utterly foreign version of our world. It is funny, it is sad, it is at times bleak.

This is theatre for isolated times.

Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch [recorded 2017 - SchauSpielHaus]

I watched this in recording here - although this production isn’t up any longer, there are more great productions to see.

Alice Birch’s script traces three generations of women over top of one another, through similar moments in their lives. The three timelines occur concurrently, with single conversations existing within each, yet also across - with a response in one timeline seeming to call to a question in another, across decades. Choosing to position the three women in claustrophobic columns, each with their own upstage door, no walls yet feeling clearly they could not leave, in chronological order left to right (from audience view) the matriarch is positioned as having the most power, however as we see, it is the youngest who acts upon her power, where her mother and grandmother succumbed to mental illness.

Alex Eales’ set makes each woman’s room feel like her prison cell, and Katie Mitchell’s direction, keeping the three on stage for the duration, including costume changes which are choreographed and lit as the women stand there like paper dolls awaiting their new outfit. It seems to imply the that each is imprisoned, contained, controlled - almost devoid of the capacity for choice. Strangely, not realizing this was the same designer who did Katie’s Fraulein Julie, this set did make me think of that production as well.

What wasn’t perfectly clear was how and why the youngest is different, until the final moments - deviation from the same choreography and rhythm may have helped us see this capacity to break the cycle, imply its possibility. I wonder whether this could have been baked subliminally into that choreography.

Otherwise, this was a stunning production of an unbelievably challenging text. The rhythm and technique required, while balancing a delightful liveness and action, even in moments where the actor must technically pause for another line, while maintaining intent, was beautiful and an absolute treat to watch.

This was a re-mount of the same production, but with a German cast. I’d be very curious to see the English cast version (Royal Court) as well.

The Complete Deaths by Tim Crouch & Spymonkey [Recorded 2016 @ Shoreditch Town Hall]

I watched this in recording via Spymonkey’s Vimeo account - you can watch it here until April 25. (if it asks for a login, just create a vimeo account, and it will credit you the amount). Note: there are 2 parts.

This is what I needed in isolation. Wild, silly, irreverent, a bit mad. This show does…yes…the complete deaths. All of the onstage deaths in Shakespeare’s plays, acted out in various styles by the company, through a debate over what kind of work they are making. Using the aid of video cameras and projection, musical instruments, and a zillion props, the company make light of the darkness in the plays, showing the strangeness and absurdity of the plays in their most serious moments.

This is fun. it is irreverent. I don’t honestly know what else to say, other than watch it. You will laugh out loud. You will wonder what is going on. And you’ll enjoy it.

The Three Sisters - Red Torch Theatre (recording - via Stage Russia HD)

I watched this via Stage Russia HD, however it was available there only for a limited time. It is also available (For a fee) via Digital Theatre subscriptions.

I first read about this production last year, when researching Timofey Kulyabin as his production of Ivanov was on at Barbican during a visit. You can read my thoughts on that production here. His production of The Three Sisters is almost entirely non-vocalized; the characters, aside from Ferapont, speak in sign language. This does not mean it is silent, however. The production has a detailed score that creeps on you. At first it is high heels clicking on the floor, or floor boards creaking. It is characters playing a game in the next room, or Andrij practicing the violin. Toys squeaking, dishes clanking, clocks ticking - all the sounds of life. This score swells and rescinds magically as the story goes on.

The set enables us to see all the rooms of the house at once - a large open space, with smaller rooms set up and demarcated using lines on the floor, like taping out a set, except that it doesn’t grow upward. These lines do stretch upward in the imaginations of the actors, however, who peek around walls, and behave as if they are there. Thus while a scene may be occurring in one area, wordless, the sounds from another room emphasize, engage, and intentionally distract from what is at play. These sounds make the relationships between the characters clearer than they have ever been.

We see Natasha fretting and primping while Masha broods. We see Irina lamenting her boredom with the choices available to her, while we see servants working around her.

The production is placed now, but also not-now. Characters receive messages on smartphones, and these devices are even used to light an entire set of scenes after the fire, the eerie blue glow of digital interaction a haunting reminder that our own times are not so far departed from those of turn-of-the-twentieth Russia.

The boredom, the excess…these were all too prescient as we sit here in our collective spaces. So many of us with the privilege of boredom, of devices to be bored of, while those less fortunate must go out and work in these dangerous times, risking their lives to deliver us sushi or mcdonalds or groceries in the comfort of our homes, so WE don’t have to go out.

Most striking were the moments, well chosen by Kulyabin, where the movement and sound stopped entirely, and we saw the characters just sit and wait, only the sound of a ticking clock to accompany them. The show was truly striking, comfortably holding your attention despite its 4 hour running time. The time flew by. Yet didn’t.

Richard III - Schaubuhne Berlin (recording)

I watched this recording of the performance via the Schaubühne Berlin website; they are making one show per day available, find them here.

This blog is quickly devolving into a Lars Eidinger/Thomas Ostermeier fan account, and I’m not sad about it. I skipped the live stream of Hamlet, having seen it live in 2012 at Barbican, in favour of seeing another interpretation, their Richard III. It did not disappoint.

This is wild Shakespeare. Messy, beautiful, visually poetic Shakespeare where the extremity and heightened images and physicality match the height of the language. Every time I watch a German production of Shakespeare, I’m reminded of how safe the work here in Canada and in the UK can be. How Bardolatry has superseded everything else; how if you do something other than stand and speak the words, somehow you are not “doing Shakespeare”. These productions are here to remind us that isn’t the case, nor is it necessary.

The industrial nature of the set, mashing images of high society ballgowns and suits with German club culture, and a warehouse aesthetic underscore how Richard is different from those around him. This Richard is plainly manipulative; we see the props and prosthetics that create his difference as items clearly clipped on to him. We see him manipulating his physical appearance, and using that to manipulate those around him. His early scene with Anne isn’t him seducing her but rather deploying his vulnerability into making her feel responsible for him - a choice which for me actually helps to rationalize Anne’s choice to marry him (especially when viewed from a modern context).

Finally, by re-framing Richard as a manipulative sociopath rather than a power hungry wannabe leader, the final battle scene re-positioned as occurring entirely in his mind, we simultaneously feel pity and revulsion for this terrible self-interested human.

The use of sound design and projected visuals on top of the industrial space further created a sense of the scale of this world. This is magnificent, huge, epic Shakespeare.