Tag Archives: Scott Handy

“The Merchant of Venice” at the Almeida Theatre

19 December 2014 Edward Lukes Leave a comment

Rupert Goold’s production of The Merchant of Venice is an eye-catching and entertaining take on Shakespeare’s play. Moving the action from Venice to Vegas, complete with show girls and slot machines, is in keeping with this energetic director’s past work. Since both cities focus on money, more specifically greed, the relocation isn’t crazy, and the parallel between gambling and the risks the merchant Antonio takes really works. So Las Vegas adds fun. Unfortunately, this means some forced interpretations of the text, particularly in the recollections of the servant Lancelet, played by a very game Jamie Beamish transformed into an Elvis impersonator. It’s definitely something you’ll either love or hate.

On firmer ground, Goold stages the competition for Portia’s hand in marriage as a tacky quiz show – think Deal Or No Deal. Portia (Susannah Fielding) and her maid, a co-host, are airhead hillbillies, while suitors choose which box contains permission to marry, on TV. Live recording the action on stage feels like a frill, but the approach adds drama to repetitive scenes that can be dull and develops a theme of role-playing nicely. In the courtroom scene, when Portia comes disguised to defend Antonio, it’s thankfully not a case of Legally Blond, but real desperation she conveys. Portia’s insistence on the law becomes vicious, in keeping with a strain of shock tactics that make the scene gripping.

So here’s the real surprise of the evening. This Merchant of Venice boasts Ian McDiarmid, making a welcome return to the Almeida and never to be missed on stage. Also, the excellent Scott Handy does a superb job as Antonio, the still centre of this often stormy show. But it’s Fielding and the role of Portia that really intrigues. The play’s anti-Semitism is clear and bravely dealt with, yet Goold seems more concerned with its misogyny. The final scene, a happy reunion at Belmont, often a cozy rounding up of the play, has a suggestion of violence towards the young brides that leaves an uneasy feeling. As Portia dons the blonde wig she wore on television, clearly destined to an inferior role in her new marriage, it appears she has lost her bet.

Until 14 February 2015

www.almeida.co.uk

Photos by Ellie Kurttz

Uncategorized

“Troilus and Cressida” at the Riverside Studios

6 November 2014 Edward Lukes Leave a comment

The World Shakespeare festival, which this new production of Troilus and Cressida at the Riverside Studio includes, has made audiences more familiar with radical versions of the canon. But this co-production between the RSC and the renowned American company, The Wooster Group, is staged in such a bizarre fashion, the play becomes confusing and alienating. It doesn’t help that the actors interact with videos mounted on big poles as they perform. This gives rise to seemingly erratic movements which have been prompted by the videos. Frankly, makes the whole show downright odd.

Co-directors Elizabeth LeCompte and Mark Ravenhill set Shakespeare’s Trojan war love story in an unspecified location with Native Americans against contemporary British soldiers. Sort of. The Trojans have futuristic costumes (by Folkert De Jong) and the British troops have a tendency to don drag. You certainly won’t be bored, but there is no balance – the play is made into a puzzle. It’s true that Troilus and Cressida is full of contradictions, but this company is obsessed with abandoning any coherence: the ideas and delivery may be eye-catching, but they add little humour or, more importantly, drama.

It is the actors who suffer most by this treatment with their performances reduced to bizarre cameos. Marin Ireland and Scott Shepherd deliver the title roles in a deliberately monotonous, stylised, fashion. Among the Trojans only Greg Mehrten’s Pandarus manages to break this spell by the force of his stage presence. The British contingent do better (maybe their delivery is more familiar), but Aidan Kelly’s WWF-inspired Ajax and Zubin Varla’s Thersites stubbornly reject any subtlety and quickly become annoying. Scott Handy has a better night of it as an asthmatic Ulysses, but his brief appearance as Helen is such bizarre casting, it jars. Most damning of all, Shakespeare’s text is delivered so differently that comprehension suffers. Whatever points that LeCompte and Ravenhill wish to make are unclear. Most of the plot is lost as well.

Until 8 September 2012

www.riversidestudios.co.uk

Photo by Hugo Glendinning

Written 31 August 2012 for The London Magazine

Uncategorized

“Love the Sinner” at the National Theatre

1 November 2014 Edward Lukes Leave a comment

Playwright Drew Pautz has set himself a challenging task in writing Love the Sinner. His new play, premiering at the National Theatre’s Cottesloe auditorium, takes as its subject matter internal politics within the Anglican Communion. This is not, for many of us, the hottest of topics.

Thankfully, the play opens up rather beautifully. The debate, taking place in Africa, questions the role of religion in the modern world. The African delegates stand in contrast to their European counterparts. For them, religion is a powerful force, and they have a faith that might be commended by Kierkegaard. The church should take a stand – preservation not progress is needed. Discussions are ostensibly about the rights of homosexuals in the church and, when a volunteer at the conference has a sexual encounter with one of the hotel’s porters, Pautz begins to explore how abstract arguments impact on personal conscience.

Jonathan Cullen plays Michael, the volunteer who finds himself in a distinctly awkward post-coital conversation with a hotel staff member. Joseph, touchingly insistent on his name being remembered, is desperate and dangerous. Described subsequently as a Furie, Joseph is played by Fiston Barek with a febrile energy. Cullen, by contrast, risks being too meek to be believable.

Anxiety follows Michael back to England where, to the detriment of all, religion becomes an increasingly important part of his life. Charlotte Randle is a highlight as his wife Shelly. So obsessed with having a child that having a husband seems an annoyance, she is exasperated by the man she now lives with who, seems to just ‘sweat and pray’. As the distance between them grows, Randle crafts a moving portrayal. At work, a skilful mix of embarrassed glances and confrontations make for an amusing farce whose comedy is tempered by melancholy. And Michael’s problems have really only just begun.

Joseph finds his way to England and Michael providing a skilfully written, tense final act. Here, Scott Handy is superb as the church’s PR man who sees realism, not God, in a situation, while Ian Redford does well as the play’s liberal bishop.

What the Bishop and Michael both want is reconciliation. An agreement, at least, to disagree. Throughout the play, such a step seems impossible and, if God can’t provide it, then it is unreasonable to expect that Drew Pautz can, no matter how satisfying it would be for an audience. The effort made by Joseph to progress past the shame he is supposed to feel ultimately fails to convince. It seems inevitable that this thought-provoking play leaves us feeling unreconciled and unresolved.

Until 10 July 2010

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Photo by Keith Pattison

Written 13 May 2010 for The London Magazine