Life is a Dream at the Donmar Warehouse November 9, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , add a commentI wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this one. Wordy seventeenth century Spanish philosophising, in translation, a TV star male lead whom I’d never seen. Expectations, and reviews, were mixed (the Guardian and Telegraph liked it, the Indy was ambivalent).
The first impression is the set, all black with a gold leaf backdrop nearly a map of the world and three concentric rings around a moorish lantern. In the background, Ansuman Biswas sings.
The King of Poland has a son, Sigismundo, whom he has imprisoned from birth, trying to stop the astrological prediction that he will be a cruel king from ever coming true. Meanwhile, Rosaura arrives from Muscovy with her servant Clarion, intent on avenging the slight to her honour given by Alfonso when he promised to marry her then left for Poland to woo Estrella, his cousin and joint heir to the throne. Rosaura and Clarion see Sigismundo in his woodland prison, and are found by his gaoler, who is supposed to execute them. As he is secretly Rosaura’s father, he doesn’t want to, and so takes them to the king. There’s a little of As You Like It’s Rosalind and Touchstone in Rosaura and Clarion, and they stumble through the wilderness.
When the King decides to release Sigismundo and give him a chance to prove the prophecy wrong, Sigismundo fails utterly, killing a courtier and trying to rape Rosaura. The King has him returned to prison, and told that it has all been a dream. Shortly, rebels arrive to free Sigismundo, urging them to lead him against the King. He takes up their offer, war ensues and he wins. Eventually, all are reconciled, and various marriages take place.
Dominic West is a brilliant nearly-sane Sigismundo, from despair and grief at his imprisonment early in the play, through the ferocity of his first time of freedom, to the dignity of the final soliquy.
The question of the play is not plot, who ends up with whom, but the far deeper ones of free will, whether we can rise above destiny and the true nature of life. At first Sigismundo is prisoner of his stars, but later pulls himself onto a path he chooses. Kate Fleetwood’s Rosaura may regret not being more careful what she wished for, and Lloyd Hutchinson’s poor Clarion is just collateral damage.
Helen Edmundsdon’s translation switches from Elizabethan phrasing to modern idiom, making the language easily understood and emphasising the contrast between the chivalrous courtly life of the aristocrats and the more down to earth simplicity of Clarion, the ordinary servant.
I didn’t know, but might have guessed, that these lines of Sigismundo’s soliquy are Spain’s ‘To be, or not to be’:
| Yo sueño que estoy aquí destas prisiones cargado, y soñé que en otro estado más lisonjero me vi. ¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión, una sombra, una ficción, y el mayor bien es pequeño: que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son. |
I dream that I am here burdened with these imprisonments I dreamed that in another state I saw myself more happy What is life? A frenzy What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction And the greatest good is small: For all life is a dream And the dreams, they are dreams. |
The middle of the front row at the Donmar Warehouse is the best place in the house, though you need to book early to get there. Life is a Dream runs until 28 November, and must be seen.
Speaking in Tongues November 8, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , add a commentOne of the joys of live theatre is the way an ensemble piece grows and develops during the run. A company working a repertoire builds an organic thing far greater than the original parts and, at its best, culminates in the magic that was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Histories Cycle.
In the six weeks between my first outing to Speaking in Tongues at the end of its preview period and my second last night, the four-person cast of John Simm, Kerry Fox, Lucy Cohu and Ian Hart have gone from giving us a well-executed, gripping thriller to something mesmerising.
Speaking in Tongues is a complex interplay of nine characters whose intertwined lives explore marital and extra-marital relationships in early middle-age. Adultery may imply a lack of love, or not. It may be easier to wish a partner dead, than simply to leave. Some broken hearts never mend, and some may never get close enough to have the chance. The couples share the stage, having private conversations with each other, sometimes speaking in tandem, sometimes seperately.
Kerry Fox, the New Zealand actor who first made her name as the disturbed genius Janet Frame in Angel at My Table, gives us the nervous, disappointed Jane, lacking self esteem and regretting her childlessness, then switches to the more confident but deeply troubled Sarah who lets men become dependent on her and then rejects them.
John Simm, of Life on Mars fame, starts and finishes as Leon Zac, the urbane policeman slightly overawed by his successful wife who has a one night stand with Jane, and in between plays Nick, falsely accused of murder.
Lucy Cohu, who I saw most recently in Channel 4′s Cape Wrath with David Morrissey, plays Sonya, who doesn’t sleep with Jane’s husband, and leaves Leon when he confesses, and then Valerie, child abuse victim and psychotherapist. Finally Ian Hart is Jane’s husband and then Valerie’s.
Simm and Fox particularly have that remarkable talent of completely changing their physical appearance when they switch roles. Plain Jane and professional Sarah would barely appear the same if standing side-by-side.
The rapport between Simm and Cohu, the couple who’s love survives infidelity, is so strong you’d think they were off-stage lovers (though I’ve no idea of or wish to comment on their private lives), and seems to have grown during the run. In a similar way, the sad chill between Fox and Hart as Fox confesses that she doesn’t trust him as she feels she should is heart-rending.
This is an intelligent, complex drama delivered with fulsome depth, and is highly recommended.
Speaking in Tongues runs at the Duke of York’s until 12 December. Seats F16-17 in the stalls gave a good view though tonight’s in C11-12 was better. The theatre wasn’t completely full, and there are bargains to be had. And many thanks to the nice people who run the facebook group for the free tickets I won.
Is Climate Change a Religion ? November 5, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a commentTim Nicholson, formerly the Director of Sustainability at the property firm Grainger plc is clearly a sincere and strong believer in the dangers posed by climate change, and when his former boss told him to get on a plane to bring his forgotten Blackberry over to Ireland, Nicholson rightly felt he was being treated with contempt. The boss sounds like an utter prat, and you have to wonder why he ever bothered to hire a director of sustainability in the first place.
He won a victory of sorts this week when a judge ruled that ‘a belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.’
Its good that he’s managed to get some satisfaction (and compensation) out of this situation, but I’m not sure that this is a victory to be welcomed.
Under The Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, it is considered harrassment if an employer does something, because of an employee’s beliefs, which violates the employees dignity or creates an ‘ intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for ‘ the employee.
The judge also set out some criteria by which a ‘belief’ could be included under the regulations.
• The belief must be genuinely held.
• It must be a belief and not an opinion or view based on the present state of information available.
• It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life.
• It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.
• It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.
Humanism would fit, being a Jedi Knight would not.
There is no need for the belief to be, in any sense, true. Of course, if it did, then we would have the the courts trying to establish religious matters which, while probably entertaining for some, would be a disaster.
The notion that a belief in climate change should come into this category is a troublesome one.
What happens when someone has a perfectly genuinely held belief which doesn’t fit rational evidence – a belief which most of us would consider just plain wrong. Perhaps a medic believes that homeopathy works, and feels insulted if their colleagues don’t respect that?
As a result of this ruling, the climate change sceptics who think its ‘just a matter of belief’ will be vindicated.
Of course, the answer is that no employer should violate their employees dignity or create an intimidating environment for any reason. This is a dubious regulation, and the ruling helps noone.
