the jew of malta
titus andronicus
volpone
Knives are out at a blood-soaked market
Last Thursday I could have stayed home and watched
The Sopranos
on television but instead I saw a far more horrific, blood-soaked
Italian family drama on stage. Shakespeare's
Titus Andronicus
is not for the faint-hearted. It contains two executions, seven
stabbings, one rape, two mutilations, two cut throats and cannibalism
which even the Mafia might balk at.
David Lawrence and his company The Bacchanals appear to be
disciples of English critic and scholar John Russell Brown, who
advocated in his book
Free Shakespeare
that modern productions
of Shakespeare's plays should concentrate on words and actors and
abhor such distractions as confusing directorial concepts and elaborate
lighting, costume and set designs.
Given more space than they had for last year's rapidly
spoken Othello, the actors
tell the gruesome story of
internecine family and national power struggles with considerable
panache and authority to the extent that at no point did one feel
the desire to laugh, to either fend off the horror of the events on
the blood-splattered stage or to delight in the absurdity of some
of the scenes such as Marcus' long, long speech when he first sights
but does not immediately help the raped and mutilated Lavinia.
John Porter leads the large, committed company of young actors,
including that stalwart Walter Plinge, with a compelling and
huskily-spoken Titus. Two complaints. First, words spoken very
softly or very loudly still need to be enunciated carefully.
Second, Demetrius and Chiron played as Penthouse-reading,
satchel-carrying schoolboy psychopaths smacks of a directorial
concept - and a hard one to resist, I admit - that is out of kilter
with the rest of the style of production which is largely and
successfully performed without such distracting, if blackly
humourous, anachronisms.
With this bloody drama under their belts, The Bacchanals
are also performing with the same actors Marlowe's
The Jew of Malta and Jonson's
magnificent comedy Volpone. If you
have the stamina you can see all three in one day on either
Saturday 18 or 25 or September 1, or you can see a single play on
a weekday till August 31.
- Laurie Atkinson,
The Evening Post
Feast of evil lacks zest, invention
Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, with
the Machiavellian hero
Barabas and his Turkish slave Ithamore ("we are villains both"),
is not only anti-Semitic but also anti-Christian and anti-Muslim.
Barabas is a vicious, cold-hearted psychopath whose excessive greed,
plottings and murders are black comedy at its most extreme as well
as, at times, its funniest.
While the body count mounts - a whole nunnery dies having
eaten a mess of poisoned rice porridge - and the savage comedy is
released - a friar laments he hasn't had the chance to take the
virginity of a woman whose death-bed confession he's just heard -
Christopher Marlowe starts to resemble, as has been pointed out
by an English reviewer, the 1960s playwright Joe Orton. Both
loved to shock people, both were briefly imprisoned, both were
homosexual and both met early and violent deaths.
Of the three Elizabethan plays that The Bacchanals have
performed in the past couple of weeks
The Jew of Malta is
the most difficult to carry off successfully. To perform
convincingly the horrors of
Titus Andronicus without
earning undesired laughter from an audience is relatively easy
in comparison with performing the glittering malignity that is
at the heart of Marlowe's play.
We need to enjoy the schemes and machinations of Barabas
as we do when Richard of Gloucester kills on his way to becoming
king or when Hannibal Lecter outwits the FBI.
And the play needs an Olivier or a Hopkins to make the evil
"attractive". All of which may seem unfair to Carey Smith who plays
Barabas but every now and then he shows that he has the ability to
ignite the necessary black flame as he does when Barabas casually
remarks that "I walk abroad a'nights and kill sick people groaning
under walls."
But the production as a whole, as admirably simple in
conception as Titus Andronicus
and Volpone, doesn't
have their zest and invention.
For example, nearly all the actors' entrances came from stage
left and Barabas' watery death really does need a spectacular piece
of staging as Philip Henslowe knew way back in the 1590s.
- Laurie Atkinson,
The Evening Post
Minimalist settings suit tale of Volpone
With Titus Andronicus safely
under their belts, The Bacchanals
continue their daring adventure into Elizabethan drama with a
rip-roaring version of Volpone,
Ben Jonson's dark satire on
human greed and gullibility. The dark and bloody struggles for revenge
and power in Shakespeare's play are exchanged in Jonson's comedy for
the devious schemes people devise to obtain "the world's soul" - gold.
Again, The Bacchanals use only curtains and bare boards for
the settings and the costumes are modern and comically bizarre - Mosca's
fluffy slippers, for example. Jonson's tricky language is rapidly
spoken and, while not always entirely audibly, it's spoken as if the
actors fully understand what it means.
There is none of that bogus laughter from them during scenes
which have lost their humour after 400-odd years but
we've-got-to-get-through-this-scene-anyhow that often bedevils
Shakespearean productions.
James Stewart's Volpone is full of nervous energy when
Volpone is on the make, and the scenes on his death-bed are
heart-rendingly pathetic and funny. The ghastly Lady Would-Be
(Andrea Molloy) who screeches at him during her visit is capped
with a delightfully despairing "before I feigned diseases, now
I have one".
Tina Helm's Mosca flits about the stage like the fly
Mosca is, while Erica Lowe manages to be consistently funny as
Celia, a one-note role of outrage to the indignities the poor woman
suffers at the hands of Volpone and her husband Corvino, who is
played as an Elizabethan Basil Fawlty by John Porter.
Volpone's household brings a Marx Brothers' topsy-turvydom
to the play: Mark Cleary's Nano, the largest dwarf ever seen,
Eve Middleton's eunuch Castrone, suitably indeterminate, while
Alex Greig's Androgyno, a hermaphrodite, lets it all hang out.
And then there is Heather O'Carroll's Voltore, a barrister who makes
OJ Simpson's lawyers look like amateurs when it comes to courtroom
stratagems. She plays the role with brio, using her height and
flexible face to excellent comic effect as she swoops about the
court in her black gown.
Though there is little indication in the production that
the characters hovering over the supposedly dying carcass of Volpone
(the fox) represent carrion birds (Corvino, the crow), the bustling
energy of this youth-driven production is sufficient enough to get
them through successfully and give the audience a good time.
The impression left by the performances and the production
is of a commedia dell'arte troupe out to entertain and let the
subtleties of the play go hang.
Maybe next year The Bacchanals should burrow into just one play.
- Laurie Atkinson,
The Evening Post
The Bacchanals are a big group doing big projects: staging three
Renaissance plays in the same season and back-to-back on Saturdays in
the aptly-named "marathon". Not being much of an athlete, I decided
to see just Titus Andronicus -
Shakespeare's first, and most gory,
tragedy. Bill got lots of flack for it, from his contemporaries and from
critics ever since, and it's rarely performed because of this. I don't
see why, I think it's a great play, and I'm not even a gore-seeker.
The language is lucid, descriptive, incisive and free from the clever
verbose word-play that Shakespearean characters are prone to. Barely
any characters get out of the play without getting grievously disfigured
and killed, and the ones who do will require serious counselling. There
are some really mean cats - cold-hearted schemer Tamora (Eve Middleton),
her satanic loverboy Aaron (David Prendergast) and her dopey pricks-of-sons
Chiron and Demetrius. Not to say that Titus (John Porter) and his crew
are angels - he's a short-tempered half-mad general. Possible morals
of the story: most people are bad to the bone; be grateful your family
isn't as fucked up as their ones; what goes around comes around; revenge
doesn't pay. The Bacchanals admit to "not being interested in clever
staging...sets, costumes, props, design or technology" and the Wakefield
Market is an excellent venue for this kind of theatre. Never have I
seen a show so effectively lit by three floodlights and one red backlight.
The uncluttered set enhances the language of the play and the stunt
knives and fake blood more than make up for the set's minimalism. Out
comes the mop during interval. You'll love it.
- Daphne Ullwers,
The Package
Bacchanals do 'golden age' plays proud
Few braved the entire marathon presentation of three famous English
renaissance plays on Saturday. As one of that tiny band, I'm not sure
it's something I'd recommend - half way through the first section of
Ben Jonson's marvellous Volpone,
it took a supreme effort to
follow the complex action till I got my second wind.
But the effort was worth it. After two tragedies, Marlowe's
The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare's
Titus Andronicus, and
Volpone,
you really begin to get a feel for that golden age of English.
The world from which the plays spring comes into sharp focus.
The obsession with manipulation and trickery, which consumes all three,
whether they're dealing with political tragedy or social comedy, is
powerfully shown.
But whether seen this way or, more practically, one at a time,
each play recommends itself on its own merits, and each is produced well,
in one case exceptionally so.
The Jew of Malta
(Wednesdays at 7pm, Saturdays 3pm) is
nowadays better known as a footnote in the history of anti-semitism.
Watching the play, we're surprised by its indictment of all
powers in society, as the Christian rulers in Malta make the Jews
pay to ransom the island from the Turks. They do it on the high-minded
grounds that, occasionally, one must suffer for the many - as long as
that one is someone else.
Everyone is corrupt, and in this context the scheming of
Barabas (Carey Smith) is almost just another survival strategy.
When the Christians finally team up with the Turks in an act
of breathtaking cynicism, one feels that Marlowe, an outsider himself,
is making a powerful argument for anarchy.
The problematic dramatic structure makes this weaker than the
other two, but it's an eye-opening presentation and Marlowe's language
is gorgeous.
No dramatic problems with
Titus (Thursdays 7pm,
Saturdays 5.30pm). Long considered an embarrassment, this play's
time has come. Its grotesque mutilations and gore are easy to
understand in a time when ethnic cleansing, torture and reprisal
killings are daily events.
This production, anchored by John Porter's great interpretation
of Titus, would be worth seeing at five times the price. At $10, it's
the bargain of the year, and it's hard to imagine the play done better.
The marvellous silent opening to the second act is insightful
theatre. Eve Middleton's Tamora, Queen of the Goths, is icy and scheming,
and David Prendergast gives the evil of her scheming slave Aaron glamour
and repulsion.
Everyone delivers the beautiful words Shakespeare lavishes on
this gruesome tale with crystal perfection.
Volpone
(Fridays 7pm, Saturdays 8.30pm), which as a play
is the strongest of the three, is as rollicking finale.
It doesn't quite make it to the same level as the
Titus
production because it hasn't yet found the play's main thread, but it's
plenty of fun.
In a world where everyone's on the make, Volpone is a trickster
who feigns a lingering mortal illness to laugh at would-be heirs seeking
to be named in his will.
There is a hint a commedia dell'arte in James Stewart's
gleefully manipulative Volpone and his relationship with Tina Helm's
Mosca, a Marty Feldman type with a permanent helium squeak.
One of Jonson's greatest strengths is big crowd scenes, and
there are two terrific ones here. First, when a disguised Volpone
goes into town with what may be the first and funniest snake-oil sales
pitch in drama. The second is the court scene with Heather O'Carroll's
marvellous prosecution speech.
It's a treat to see these plays at all, and within extremely
modest means, The Bacchanals have done them proud.
- Timothy O'Brien,
The Dominion
Who would dare to put on three, long, complex plays in one day, using
amateur (though not inexperienced) actors and virtually no financial
resources? David Lawrence, that's who. Each Saturday for a month he
and his cast started at 3pm and kept themselves and their audience busy
until 11.30pm. For those with less stamina (I confess I was one) there
was a chance to see each play separately on a weeknight. The demands on
the actors are enormous, especially on those who had large roles in all
three plays. Just the effort of remembering all those words (not a line
was cut) was enough to impress many in the audience. But the physical
demands on voices and bodies were considerable too.
That was one's first impression: doing this at all is a feat
of strength, endurance and determination. How well they did it became
a secondary consideration. In fact, on the whole, they did it
surprisingly well. They were carried along by the sheer verbal skill
of the writing and the exhilaration of the passion and complexity of
the plots. They were also carried along by their own obvious enthusiasm
and dauntless devotion to the task. Those of us who thirst for the
rhythms and poetry of the greatest period in English drama and usually
left dry by local companies had to be grateful for this feast of
splendid drama, no matter what reservations we might otherwise have.
Long life to The Bacchanals!
The Jew of Malta is
an appalling play, and yet written
with such verve and with occasional excursions into such lovely poetry
that one giggles in amused embarrassment at its horrors and goes along
with its spirit. The three great religions of the European and
Mediterranean world, Judaism, Islam and Christianity are brought into
contact with each other. Unlike Lessing's
Nathan der Weise,
however, here they are all presented as rivals in viciousness,
selfishness and horror. Lessing's play is noble, magnificent and
a gem of Enlightenment though, where the three religions learn to
tolerate each other.
The Jew of Malta is a play from a much
more unstable age and written by an atheist cynic. Marlowe shows us
the religious groups as savage in their efforts to exploit each other
and gain the upper hand over each other. Venal, hypocritical, willing
to sacrifice their own parents or children for their own advantage.
The effect is gruesome, when thought of in the abstract, but presented
with vivid imagery on a never-peaceful stage it is curiously enriching
and even funny.
So why does this not apply to
Titus Andronicus?
Curiously, this was the play I enjoyed least. I find that curious
because I would normally go an extra mile for the sake of a Shakespeare
play. I had never seen this one performed before, but of course I was
aware of its reputation for horrors and bloodshed. So what? How many
plays, films, book are filled with such horrors and yet still catch our
imaginations? I went to Titus
expecting to be nervously
titillated yet entertained, as I was by
The Jew of Malta. I'm
afraid I have to put the blame on The Bacchanals, whom I otherwise
admire. The brilliance of Shakespeare's language might redeem or
compensate for the horrors. But the words, in the performance I saw,
were spoken flatly and with a contagious, unchanging intonation and
rhythm that was harsh on the ears and boringly repetitive. One was
left with images of unredeemed cruelty and bloodshed, presented with
ghastly realism. Shakespeare has his own share of the blame - none
of the characters gives one much hope for humanity except, perhaps,
Lavinia, and she is the most brutally treated of all. Usually, I
think, when audiences are distressed by a play they have failed to
understand its positive qualities. Perhaps this was my failure here.
Volpone, on the
other hand, is one of the finest plays
in the language. There are no admirable characters here, either: on
the contrary. But there is an overall spirit, a sense of the writer
guiding the action, that lightens and irradiates the play. The
contrast between Titus and
Volpone is revealing in
this respect. It is not identification with any character but
identification with the play as a whole, and by implication with the
author's invisible presence within it, that makes for enjoyment and
appreciation. The actors took every opportunity to play up the farce
and physical comedy here, and a very enjoyable job they made of it,
even if some of the more meditative levels and even the bitter,
satirical one tended to suffer as a result.
In short, the presentation of three plays rather than one
paid off because of the opportunities it provided to compare, contrast
and generalise about them all. There are many points of contact among
them, and one is led to think about them and to extend one's thoughts
to other plays of the period, searching, perhaps, for the essence of
that turbulent time. The whole experience was, consequently, very
worthwhile, and certainly stimulated lively and thoughtful conversation
among those who attended.
A few weeks previously I was at the Globe in London and
marvelled, like everyone else before me, at the flexibility and
intensity of the potential stage experience that theatre provides.
The spirit of these productions was in keeping with that - I wish
these performers had a chance to tread the boards of the Globe. In
the old, sadly decaying Wellington market building, The Bacchanals
simply marked out a space with curtains and got on with the show,
using the simplest costumes and props. This focused our attention
on where it should be: the words themselves and the physical
interaction of characters.
All these virtues compensated more than enough for the
insecurities and occasional awkwardness of the productions. A few
rough edges could be forgiven when the centre held so well. How
fortunate we are that we have this group of young, committed
enthusiasts, willing to put their bodies, minds and spirits on the
line to present some of the finest and most neglected plays in the
repertoire. Even listing the actors' names would burst the limits
of space, and picking out individuals would be unfair to the others.
I'm looking forward with keen anticipation to their future performances.
- Nelson Wattie,
Theatre News
Marks for bravery but trilogy disappoints
Earlier this year I wrote of their Fringe production
Wealth &
Hellbeing, "The Bacchanals confirm the must-see status of all
they do." Now I have to say, of this ambitious Renaissance trilogy -
performed on separate nights during the week and then over nearly
nine hours on Saturdays - only one is worth watching.
According to a programme note, Bacchanals director David
Lawrence was inspired to suggest the enterprise after reading of
the Royal Shakespeare Company's History cycle. "For the first time
ever, they had staged the three parts of
Henry VI, something
I've always wanted to do, in their entirety," Lawrence writes.
In fact it was the entire eight-play cycle, from
Richard II through the
Henrys to Richard III, that the
RSC did, first in Stratford (March 2000), then a year later in London.
It's one thing for a fully professional company of highly
trained practitioners working full time as a match-fit ensemble, and
quite another for a part-time group of mostly semi-trained but very
committed co-op actors, to attempt such a feat. Is it hubris or chutzpah?
A blissful ignorance of their own shortcomings or an admirable need to
extend themselves by confronting huge challenges?
The answer must rest on the result. While I'm happy to applaud
their bravery in having a go, I can only go so far down the "excusing
any inadequacies" track before deciding basic failures in skill have
to be confronted.
On the face of it, the progressively ludicrous plot of
Christopher Marlowe's
The Jew of Malta subverts any potential
for meaningful socio-political satire by descending into melodramatic
bathos. At minimum it needs either central characters who challenge
us to see ourselves in their thoughts, feelings and actions, or a
director-led rationale that makes a virtue of the escalating corruption
and mindless violence.
But Barabas is gabbled and muttered by an actor more intent
on breaking some speed-speaking record than creating a coherent, let
alone convincing, character. His daughter Abigail indulges in such
excesses of emotive suffering with every line - except for one moment
of near hysterical joy - that she robs her story of any shape. And
unsupported by any clear vision of a bigger picture they may be painting,
the rest of the cast get through their lines and scenes with varying
degrees of clarity and credibility.
By total contrast their
Titus Andronicus - so often
dismissed as the first and most inferior of Shakespeare's plays - gives
us a searing insight into the inevitably dehumanising effects of war.
John Porter's Titus paints a shockingly true portrait of the
successful soldier unable to adjust to civilian life. As the perpetrator
of the acts that start the revenge cycle rolling, he becomes a profoundly
moving tragic hero. Had Porter paid more attention to when he was truly
mad and when his murderous intent was sane, he'd have found the man's
full scope.
Almost all the others find equal truth in their characters to
share their experiences to great effect. Alex Greig's ambitious
Saturninus, David Lawrence's pragmatic Bassianus and Mark Cleary's
desperately moderate Marcus all ring eerily true. Andrea Molloy's
loving then grossly abused Lavinia is sincerely heart-rending.
Heather O'Carroll and Kate Soper never falter as Quintius and Martius.
Eve Middleton's cold and calculating Tamora, James Stewart and Carey
Smith's dangerously immature Demetrius and Chiron, and David Prendergast's
almost amoral Aaron all serve the story well.
Director Lawrence gives
Titus Andronicus pace, focus and
integrity, proving The Bacchanals can get it together on occasion.
But they misfire badly with the Ben Jonson satire on greed and
corruption, Volpone. Perhaps
they're so glazed over with fatigue
and pumped full of adrenaline they lose all sense of judgement. Or
perhaps it's just clear proof that comedy is harder than tragedy.
Talk about try-hard. The more over-the-top they go, the less
funny it is. I wanted to leave at interval and envied those who did.
The tone is set by Mosca, the parasitic manservant of the
Venetian grandee who, pretending to be on his deathbed, as the rich and
greedy men of the town competing with gifts in the hope they'll be named
heir to his considerable fortune.
I cannot recall such a face-pulling, lip-licking, body-twitching,
shoulder-hunching, hand-rubbing, hysteria-driven travesty as this
hyper-manic Mosca: a total contradiction of the "fine, elegant rascal"
described by the text.
The possibility that this is just one misjudged aberration is
contradicted by the over-acting of almost everyone else, including the
director himself.
I can only suppose they have misapprehended the basic principle
of commedia performance, which finds its broad but minimalist style by
distilling the essence of human experience from emotional truth.
Only Heather O'Carroll as the avaricious legal advocate Voltore,
and Erica Lowe as the much-wronged Celia, get it right but their skills
are drowned in the deluge of coarse acting.
Be they running on hubris or chutzpah, The Bacchanals now have
to realize intelligence, energy and enthusiasm are not enough to sustain
a performing ensemble that can meet their objectives. It is also a
physical and vocal craft and too many fall short in those skill areas.
To go to the next level, they need to do whatever it takes to
make well-tuned and responsive instruments of themselves. That is what
sustains most successful poor theatre companies.
- John Smythe,
National Business Review
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