Donmar Shakespeares at Kings Cross

Our revels now are ended...

I can’t tell you how floored I was by Julius Caesar. The Shakespeare itself was fizzing with violence, menace, conspiracy and threat; the prison was also fizzing with violence, menace, conspiracy and threat. Rather than one merely complement the other, this was Julius Caesar squared, the violence of one egging on the violence of the other, the end result being utterly haunting and still as close to a bona fide thriller as I’ve ever seen on stage. Henry IV was always going to be something of a let-down, as it couldn’t have that shock factor, and whilst it didn’t quite meet the high standard of the first, it wasn’t far off: in streamlining everything down to the simple violence of civil war, the sense of threat was palpable, the testosterone pumping, the adrenaline running (the issue is Henry IV is such a broad play it inevitably felt too much like a simplification). Following two relatively great successes was always going to be a challenge, particularly when The Tempest doesn’t seem to offer such possibilities for violence or need for the prison setting. And in some ways, this is a slight let down, though that’s partly due to expectations being raised and the shock factor no longer being there, as well as a slight betrayal of the simple, streamlined genius of Caesar. But it’s impossible to treat this clinically as merely another Tempest, and instead as the closing chapter of a hugely significant trilogy, one which I hope spawns much in the way of criticism, academia and hopefully some kind of significant, lasting document containing all the lines of thought of four years of theatre. And in that sense, it still has pragmatic issues, but it’s a greatly apt finale to these three shows.

The first thing to say is I would love to see a trilogy day, as I expect that would be more dramatically surprising. Naturally the cast has changed substantially over the years, so I’m sure there’ll be moments of pertinence I didn’t get, if the Frances Barber/Cush Jumbo/Ashley Maguire ‘characters’ go on an arc that’s as involving as Harriet Walter’s. Without that I’m sure I missed out on certain bits and bobs, I wonder how cross-casting pays off in these particular manifestations of the shows. I’m sure some of the final pay-offs are far more pertinent, and perhaps some of the prisoner’s identities and off-stage relationships offer character drama when you get to invest in one day.

Regardless, it’s impossible to see this in isolation. And that helps and hinders it. Helps, infinitely, because of the affection four years of wait has nurtured and grown. Hinders, because this doesn’t follow on half as logically as it should. There was a basic economy and simplicity to Julius Caesar. This was a prison rehearsal getting out of hand. It was what it was. The final ‘twist’ of Frances Barber being a warden didn’t diminish this reality, it added to it. Henry IV was exactly the same, albeit with the silly back-entrance to be ‘immersive’ in a way those things never are (see also: the Rickson/Sheen Hamlet). Here, from the beginning, the relationship between theatre and the prison is a little hazy; whilst I don’t think that’s a bad thing in isolation, it does rather poo on the legacy of two streamlined real-relationships. If there’s any hint of this being real – which there absolutely was in the other two, both of those felt stripped-back and amateurish to just the right, non-phoney degree – it’s rather scuppered by technology far too complex to have at this level, and given the other two were ‘real’, our expectations for this have to be nullified far earlier for this to symbolically work. As it takes so long to establish that this is all symbolism, unlike the others, it begins wishy-washy, and as it’s all metaphorical and dreamt up, there’s a risk of reading Prospero's final 'release' as wholly Tom Jones. And, actually, it made for a much more compelling relationship when the drama ‘offstage’ of the prison was getting as raucous as the drama ‘onstage’, or more to the point it was getting harder and harder to tell where one ended and the next began and when the prison itself was going to riot and mutiny right in front of us, or possibly at us – this is a much safer, more comfortable show to watch through its fancifulness. All of that said, there is one moment of utter beauty, when the audience is ‘involved’, which makes this all worthwhile, such a stunningly simple but powerfully moving moment of isolation yet involvement. So as a continuation of the themes established in 2012, it’s a slight misstep, because it misjudges what the last two shows got just right. But it’s a continuation of shows from 2012 – 2012! – and that makes it more of an event than maybe any other show I’ve seen in a long long time, possibly only Harry Potter notwithstanding.

Despite these qualms, which are qualms I only have due to seeing it as part three and not its own show, Lloyd’s Tempest is, in its own isolation, genuinely insightful and (to my simple mind at least) new. Her reading of Prospero is fascinating, but more on that later – it’s Lloyd’s setting which brings out this hidden depth to the character, but it’s absolutely the performance which richly gives it life. Lloyd’s main innovation is to take the notion of the island as a colony to a fascinatingly deeper extreme; her argument is a fairly controversial extension of the long-standing criticism that Propsero is a coloniser. She argues that yes, Prospero may imprison Caliban and Ariel, but Prospero and Miranda are themselves equally prisoners of Antonio’s device, victims who make victims to get by. It’s obvious, come to think of it, but the narrative of Prospero as ruler tends to trump the narrative of Prospero the refugee, Prospero the betrayed, Prospero stuck on an island. This production repeatedly reminds us that Prospero’s life is one of refuge, and makes the island Prospero’s prison, not his study.  So with a strong performance as Prospero at its centre, this would surely make for a shocking and surprising and endlessly moving innovation...

Yes, this is possibly the best thing Harriet Walter has done this millennium (what was the consensus about Boa on the other place? I thought it occasionally contrived and saccharine, but mostly quite lovely). Her Prospero is genuinely revelatory, in a year of many Tempests. It’s quite astonishing to have a Prospero as physically strong as magically, and a Prospero clearly psychologically damaged by his loneliness. The relationship between Prospero and Walter’s prisoner (to say more would be to spoil it) is beautifully drawn in a way other prisoner/character relationships aren’t. Particularly given she’s going from Brutus to Henry to Prospero, I actually think that (unless Glenda pulls it out of the bag) the Olivier this year should be hers, over McCrory or Piper (or the ineligible Sophie Melville or Isabelle Huppert); she throws her all into this, barking out the lines like a great former Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, bringing a truly sincere love to her relationships with Ariel and Miranda and a truly scary hate to her relationship with Caliban and a truly heartbreaking yet honest desperation to her relationship with her brother/captor, darting round the stage like someone not half her age, reinterpreting the role with a menace and madness that usually is passed over for academia and intelligence, using her physical and intellectual strength to compensate for her clearly ever-dwindling psychological strength, drawing real sympathy and pity to her prisoner character, and doing this over three plays. And she plays the steel drums too. If that’s not what these awards are for, I don’t know what is. It’s her best work since “Person who flirts with Chewbacca” in Star Wars 7. She’s genuinely monumental, yet humane. Anouka’s the other stand-out, flighty and mighty, showing how wasted she was in Faustus and how witty she can be as a physical performer. Something about this set-up inspires the very best, most uninhibited from these performers. Of them, though, it’s Walter who truly dominates, utterly astonishing.

So, much as I do think the dramatic pay-off of a trilogy day will be greater, I think there’s an emotional pay-off after three/four years of investment in this saga. I’m sure there will be at least one book written about this, a document of the research and passion that made this trilogy so special, so stunning and rightly so – I can’t wait for Lloyd to let the cat out of the bag and show us all the research and secrets that made this amazing. Stage sagas don’t tend to be done. Beyond this I struggle to think of any long-running theatrical ‘event’ (marathons tend to be done in rep, not over three years). In film, in TV, sagas are easy – catch-up can take days – but for theatre, a saga like this requires so much of us, so much of theatregoers – to remain attentive over a long time, to keep our memories vivid, to sacrifice that brief bit of time every two years to keep up to date with these characters. It’s hard, in 2016, to see the conclusion of 2013’s theatre and not get nostalgic. Three/four years of investment, three/four years of theatregoing, this finale is our reward, Harriet Walter sets us free. When I saw Julius Caesar I barely knew who Ivo van Hove, Carrie Cracknell, Emma Rice, Rufus Norris, Robert Icke or Anya Reiss were. Did any of us, could any of us have predicted Tonys and Oliviers and Artistic Directorships for that lot? The West End of late 2012 wasn’t ready for the hard-hitters that would come through transfers, and I think that since then there has been a substantial swing towards controversy, misery, politics and seriousness becoming mainstream like People Places and Things, A View from the Bridge, A Doll’s House, shows I’ve seen since and can’t imagine not having as a part of my life. Hell, I was meant to see Caesar with a friend but saw it the week later as that day I ended up horrendously drunk, and when I got home from The Tempest the self-same friend phoned me, roaringly drunk herself – that’s how I bring things to full circle. Thinking about it, I’d been on the (spit on the ground) Whatsonstage board for probably under six months; back then you lovely lot barely meant anything to me (these days I don’t remember school friends but I remember you lot). Conversely yes, I’m sure that seeing all three in a day/consecutively will prove more significant regarding connections etc, but actually I think there might be a greater pay-off not from trilogy days, but from simply concluding what we started three or four years ago. If you loved Caesar – and I seem to remember, many did – The Tempest is profoundly moving. It has its own structural problems, perhaps, but for those of us who’ve invested in these years of theatregoing, it’s a clearly heartfelt farewell from all involved.