Bloody Poetry October 15, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , trackbackThe White Bear in Kennington Rd doesn’t really look worth the trip to the wilds of South of the River, with big Sky sports screens, and a few locals nursing pints. Hidden in a back room though, is one of those tiny studio theatres that pubs with a room to spare and a few eager theatre companies throw up. Two rows of bench seats around the walls, lights, action!
Tonight, it was Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry, a feast of Byron and the Shelleys. We start with their first meeting, on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816. Shelley (Richard Holt) is there with his mistresses, Mary Godwin (Ellie Turner) and Claire Claremont (Felicity Davison). Byron (James Russell) has a putative biographer, the deliciously slimy William Polidori, played by Alex Barclay. The four embark on a relationship which lasts the rest of Shelley’s brief life.
Although the language is often that of the poets, the women are not overshadowed by their talented though severely flawed men. Mary Godwin, later Shelley, is beautifully portrayed by Ellie Turner. I make the mistake of thinking of her as little more than the author of Frankenstein, though that would be enough. Her radicalism as she urges Shelley to ‘live the life’ rather than just pontificating about it, or accepts his affair with Claremont, is clearly stronger than Shelley’s own.
Kate Malyon, who plays Shelley’s first wife Harriet, spends most of the play as a Banquo-like ghost, but her initial performance as she delivers a soliliquy before throwing herself in the Serpentine is spell-binding and moving.
This is a small fringe production in a tiny theatre, but worthy of much more. It was a full house tonight, and well worth crossing the river.
Tickets are £10-12. The show runs until 31 October.
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This meeting in Switzerland (1816 not 1916) was also the setting for Ken Russell’s film “Gothic” released in 1986
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091142/