1,478 posts
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Post by Steve on Jan 18, 2018 18:49:05 GMT
Some brilliant revelatory directing turns this into a mournful paean to the hopes and dreams of stalkers.
Some spoilers follow. . .
Comedy this is not. Well, Imogen Doel generates a few laughs, brilliant comedienne that she is, but even she is left, literally and figuratively, on her knees, in Caroline Byrne's tragic vision of what happens to us when the objects, of our desire, do not desire us in return.
Ellora Torchia's Helena is the most desperately lonely and sad stalker who has ever lived. Her father dead, she fixates every fibre of her being onto Will Merrick's Bertram. In the dim candlelight of the Wanamaker, and often carrying a candle with her, a physical manifestation of her lonely flame within, Torchia's Helena is at best a ghost, and at worst a dementor.
Torchia is so brilliantly broken in her characterisation, that we can never hold her fixation against her. Byrne depicts Merrick's Bertram's instinctive revulsion to Helena to be at worst, completely understandable, and at best, eminently reasonable.
Against the backdrop of emotive music, and ghostly imagery, Torchia's dementor teams up with her fellow dementor, Nigel Cooke's King, to squeeze every drop of individuality out of poor Bertram. This is a unique vision of loneliness as a parasite, and of power as unassailable.
Really, Caroline Byrne takes a little loved Shakespeare and turns it into one of the creepiest and most unnerving things I've ever seen.
5 stars. :-o
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2,848 posts
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Post by couldileaveyou on Jan 18, 2018 23:58:14 GMT
Yeah, the text has been edited in such a way that the final result looks a lot like one of the romances rather a comedy. Saw this tonight and really enjoyed, although I'm not as enthusiastic as Steve. The staging of Act 1 finale was so OTT that it spoiled the magic of the production, the final scene was too long and not all the acting was great, but Nigel Cooke was really outstanding as the King. And I think they overdid a bit with the candles effect, at times the stage was just too dark. But it is a beautiful production, very haunting, and - generally - brilliantly directed. I'd love to see Caroline Byrne doing Winter's Tale now. 4 stars
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40 posts
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Post by dave72 on Jan 19, 2018 0:04:25 GMT
I had a very different response. I love the play, but was rather disappointed by the production. I thought much of the acting was very good--I was impressed by both the Helena and the Bertram, and thought they did much to explore the characters' complexities and make them real and palpable. But the directing seemed to me, frankly, a mess: lots of ideas that were neither cohesive nor carried through, lots of rushing around the stage in a way that felt chaotic, lots of unsustained emotional choices. The fact that almost all the characters carried candelabra throughout seriously limited their range of movement, and distracted from the play because I worried they were going to catch each other's costumes on fire. There's one disastrous casting choice that threw a whole aspect of the plot off balance. And what they've done with the ending seems to me a real failure of will. Despite these reservations, I would recommend the production primarily on the strength of Ellora Torchia's performance, but I think the play can be much subtler and more moving.
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