Richard III

Saturday 16^th August 2014, Trafalgar Studios

Poster boy

This week’s theatrical adventure was a grand anticlimax. You win some. You lose some. As you know, I was scheduled to continue in my quest to ‘collect them all’ – ‘them’ being theatrical appearances by the illustrious cast of Sherlock. In March, I saw Mark Gatiss (the marvellous Mycroft) in Coriolanus. In May, I saw Moriarty himself, Andrew Scott, in Birdland. Next year, the infamous Mr Cumberbatch is on the cards. But on Saturday, it was time for Dr Watson, Martin Freeman, to present his take on Richard III.

The day started well. At a frankly ungodly hour, my oftentimes theatre buddy, Jacqueline, and I succeeded in dragging our friend, Jackie, out of bed and onto the bus to London. Our aim was to reach the big smoke nice and early, in order to visit Highgate Cemetery. (And yes, once again, my blog diverts into some cemetery tourism!). Highgate, founded in 1839, is probably London’s most famous graveyard. It’s one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries built in the Victorian era on the outskirts of the city to prevent overcrowding. Over 170,000 people are buried at Highgate and it is well-known for its architecture and for its notable residents. In the nineteenth century, Highgate quickly gained a reputation as a fashionable place in which to be laid to rest. As the twentieth century wore on, the cemetery fell into disrepair and suffered considerable vandalism. In 1975, it was rescued when local people founded the Friends of Highgate Cemetery in order to ensure its preservation.  

Entrance to the Egyptian Avenue

The cemetery is divided into two. The older West Cemetery is only accessible via a guided tour. It boasts numerous fascinating monuments and architectural features, including an Egyptian-style Avenue, the so-called Circle of Lebanon with burial chambers surrounding a huge Cedar tree, and terraced catacombs. The tour was hugely interesting. Our enthusiastic guide outlined the history of the cemetery, explaining Victorian funeral fashions and introducing us to some of Highgate’s most intriguing residents, including the poisoned Russian secret-serviceman, Alexander Litvinenko, and Adam Worth, the master-criminal who inspired the character of Moriarty. (Got to have a Sherlock reference somewhere!)

Workers unite! 

The East Cemetery is less architecturally striking, although it does house probably the cemetery’s biggest names, George Eliot and Karl Marx. Visitors are free to wander. Marx’s huge memorial presides over what could be best named, ‘Communist Corner’ – a collection of graves of his followers and admirers, including the historian, Eric Hobsbawm.

The headstone reads 'The glorious SHEILA GISH'

From a thespian perspective, several stalwarts of the theatre are buried at Highgate. I visited the graves of Sir Ralph Richardson and his wife, Meriel, Corin Regrave, Sheila Gish, Antony Shaffer, and Max Wall.

One feels that Highgate’s stories are endless. The Friends of the cemetery have worked hard to engage visitors with tales of the people who are buried there while ensuring that the cemetery remains a beautiful and peaceful final resting place.

Once we had wandered around Highgate, we trekked over to the West End for some much-needed refreshment. Fed and watered, we popped by my favourite theatre bookshop, David Drummond in Cecil Court, where I bought some goodies - more about those in a future post! We then toddled over to Trafalgar Studios to collect our tickets for the evening’s show. The matinee was just exiting. Time for some more Sherlock spotting! Among the crowds was Holmes and Watson’s neighbour, Mrs Hudson – in real life, Una Stubbs. This was the second time, Jackie, Jacqueline and I had run into Una. We’d clocked her in the audience at Coriolanus too. She too must have been attempting to ‘collect them all’. I also spotted Claire Skinner (probably best known as the mum in Outnumbered). She didn’t look too happy. A bad omen...

A few minutes later, Jacqueline returned from the box office with the shell-shocking news that Martin Freeman was unable to perform that night! Richard III would be without its star.

Now, I go to a lot of theatre. I am fully aware that to the well-enlightened mind, this should not have been a tragedy. I am fully aware that the theatre’s management cannot guarantee anything. There’s not much a theatre can do if their headliner has caught the flu or ate a dodgy whelk. That is, of course, what an understudy is for. The show must go on. I am also fully aware that to the culturally superior, ‘the play’s the thing’ and that I should be led by the script, not the cast list.

Yes, yes... but we all know that’s not really the case. Look who's all over the posters! Only last week, the Barbican’s Hamlet did not become the quickest selling production in history simply because punters were eager to hear the tale of the Prince of Denmark. Would those who flocked to see the National Theatre’s famous production of Othello, back in 1964, have given up their evenings so readily if the Moor had been played by an unknown?  Theatrical runs bask in the glow of superstardom and struggle in its absence. In his autobiography, Christopher Plummer recalls the demise of the North American premiere of The Royal Hunt of the Sun after he was hospitalised with a blood clot:  

‘[The production] staggered on for a while, but its producers refused to pay for a “name” actor to replace me and with just my understudy valiantly carrying on night after night, good as he was, there was no “draw” to keep it running, so in a matter of weeks this gorgeous production closed.’ (In Spite of Myself (2010), p.429). 

When Elizabeth Taylor was unable to perform during the infamous run of Private Lives - her reunion with Richard Burton - the Lunt-Fontanne theatre was shut down until she recovered. Nobody, it was reasoned, had bought tickets to see the understudy.

All of this is to illustrate that when news of Martin Freeman’s indisposition reached our ears, we were naturally disappointed. We had come to see the man himself and were keen to see his interpretation of the Bard’s great villain. Nevertheless, understanding that there was not much to be done, we still went to see the show.

I did not enjoy this production. I do not think that this was simply because of Martin Freeman’s absence. His understudy, Philip Cumbus, who usually plays Richmond, gave a perfectly assured performance. It was more to do with the staging. Jamie Lloyd has chosen to locate this Richard III in the 1970s, just after the so-called ‘Winter of Discontent’. He seeks to draw on the period’s deep political divisions and rumours of a planned aristocratic coup against Wilson’s Labour government. The set itself looked like something from an episode of Life on Mars – a 1970s office with typewriters, Bakelite phones, and henchmen in tank tops and flares. Queen Margaret, dressed like Maggie Thatcher, shouts her curses to the accompaniment of flickering lights and pyrotechnics (the result of a power cut, perhaps?). Richard strangles Anne with a telephone cord to the tune of cheesy elevator music.

I am unashamed to say that I just didn’t get it. Linking the political feuds of the 1970s to Gloucester’s attempts towards the throne requires rather too much of leap and, I think, too much prior knowledge on the part of the audience. It was only when I read my programme afterwards that things became much clearer! So the class war explained the (rather dodgy) regional accents adopted by some of the cast!

The play itself felt rather underpowered. Clarence was drowned in a bloody fish tank. Queen Elizabeth was strapped, kicking and screaming, to a chair. Yet, strangely, there didn’t seem to be much energy between the actors. Philip Cumbus seemed far too restrained as Richard. Looking at the reviews of Freeman’s performance, it seems that this is the production’s intent rather than Cumbus’ own choice. His Richard could be cruel and calculating and sometimes violent, but he lacked any glittering malevolence – the strange charm and charisma which renders the audience (and indeed Richard's followers) both repulsed and transfixed. Some of the speeches were played for laughs. ‘A horse, a horse’ became a last-minute joke to the audience when Richard was facing the barrel of a gun.

At some times, the use of music drowned the words of the actors. At others, their own elocution left something to be desired. I had trouble understanding Maggie Steed at Queen Margaret. Yet, the special effects continued apace. There were bloodied heads, bangs, crashes, flashing torches, blinking lights, flapping elevator doors, and even toilet flushes. As Jacqueline put it, it was oddly like a ‘Carry On’ film in parts: ‘Carry On Dick.’

The reaction of the audience was mixed. The couple next to me left at the interval. Yet I overhead other audience members remarking how much they had enjoyed the show. Mr Cumbus was given a warm round of applause and (by some) a standing ovation.

Back in Oxford, we discovered that Martin Freeman had been off for most of last week. Ought we to have been warned? We had been told by the Box Office on Saturday that they had no information regarding refunds or the possible re-booking of tickets later in the run, once Martin was back on his feet. Instead, Box Office staff gave out slips of paper with the email address of the producers. If Martin had been away all week, surely they ought to have had more information than this?

And so the question of star-power rages on. What will be the result of dropping the producers a line, I wonder? Is there anything they can do? Clearly, they’re not obliged to come up with a solution for disappointed ticket holders. Any Martin Freeman fan, whether travelling from Canada or Canada Water, should have known that the theatre could not guarantee his appearance. Yet, will the producers acknowledge that many ticket sales for the production were made only because of its star? People do, after all, like to see a range of actors' interpretations of Shakespeare's greatest roles.  

Richard III will be played by Laurence who? 

I did a twitter search yesterday. Martin Freeman was back on stage:

Now is the winter of my discontent

In tribute to Lauren Bacall

16th September 1924 - 12th August 2014 

Lauren Bacall, who died yesterday aged 89, was smart, sexy, sophisticated; a Hollywood goddess who could floor the most self-assured gentlemen with an elegantly raised eyebrow; a woman with whom one did not trifle. Betty Perske (as she was born) was a rare thing in tinsel town – a beauty with a brain and an always ready wisecrack. Men wanted her, albeit from a somewhat awestruck distance. Women wanted to be her. 

I first came across her in my teens when reading about the Oliviers with whom she was close friends. I read her autobiographies, By Myself (1978) and Now (1994), learning about her ascent to stardom at the tender age of nineteen, her electrifying partnership with Humphrey Bogart (twenty-five years her senior), her prodigious stage and screen appearances, and her encounters with the glitterati of old Hollywood: Leslie Howard, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin... you name ‘em. A great storyteller and comedienne, I was struck by her candour and the underlying melancholy in her writing. Bogie had left her a widow at thirty-two. Although Bacall had a long career, continuing to appear in blockbusters into her eighties, the four films they made together, To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), remained her most famous and best. As her great and glamorous friends and colleagues, many much older than herself, died off, she carried on with increasing loneliness. An icon from a bygone age.

There are plenty of classic Bacall moments to savour on screen and off. She was wonderfully alluring. Her deep, husky voice contrasts with the high, wavering voices of so many cinematic damsels of the 1940s. I love the story of her trademark, ‘The Look.’ Auditioning for To Have and Have Not, in order to quell her nerves, she kept her chin pressed to her chest, staring upwards at the camera – the sultry stare that this produced was utterly unintentional. I remember a small scene from The Big Sleep where she sits on a desk, slightly lifting her skirt to scratch her knee. It’s hardly risqué but it’s mesmerising. Today’s Hollywood knows nothing so subtle and so effective.

Though I love her films with Bogart, some of my favourites were made without him. In How to Marry A Millionaire (1953), Bacall’s gorgeously cool and haughty, a perfect ally to the ditzy and loveable Marilyn Monroe and the eager and chaotic, Betty Grable. Though penniless models, they hire a plush Manhattan apartment and plot to ensnare rich husbands with varying and hilarious results. In The Shootist (1976), famous for being John Wayne’s last film, she is a strong and determined woman of character in a violent world, providing refuge to the dying gunfighter. It’s a quiet and dignified performance and deserves to be better known. I also love Bacall’s much louder performance as the relentless Mrs Hubbard in Murder on the Orient Express (1974). She is very, very funny as this American grande-dame, ever-advancing down the compartment, demanding the attention of dear Mr Poirot with her foghorn voice and the phrase: ‘My second husband always said...’

Off screen, Bacall wasn’t afraid to give her own opinion either. She was a staunch defender of the old Hollywood – a time when stars were stars and cinema was truly pushing the boundaries. Her trip to the pictures to see one of the recent Twilight films with her granddaughter has been much reported in the newspapers. Completely unimpressed at her granddaughter’s suggestion that this trash was the definitive vampire movie, Bacall recounted: ‘I wanted to smack her across the head with my shoe.’ Avoiding such action for fear of motivating a posthumous biography, Grannie Dearest, she instead presented her granddaughter with a DVD of some proper cinema: Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). ‘Now that’s a vampire film!’

Though a cinematic icon, Bacall was also a star of the stage. She twice won Tony awards for appearances in Broadway musicals: Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. In 1995, she came across the pond to appear at The Chichester Festival Theatre, in the aptly titled, The Visit. This was a mixed success. The VIP apparently caused a bit of a stir in town, complaining that the Cathedral church bells were disturbing her slumber! I’m lucky enough to have in my memorabilia collection a programme from the performance, collected strangely enough from a bric-a-brac sale in Somerset! Oh, if only I could have seen the show itself...

Lauren Bacall was great because she was different from the usual Hollywood ingénue. She was unique and so she became, and remained, a star. Statuesque, sharp-witted, and smart-mouthed, she didn’t need a man to rescue her and sweep her off her feet. She’d choose her own man and he’d have to be up to the mark! She was the perfect foil to the rough, gruff, hard-talking, hard-drinking Bogie and together they created cinematic magic. How odd to think that her first thought on hearing he might be her co-star was: ‘Cary Grant – terrific! Humphrey Bogart– yucch.’ We will remember their magic and we will remember Betty – a cracking actress, a genuine diva, and a shining star.

She taught us how to whistle...

Bogie and his Baby
Picture from Golden Age Hollywood on twitter
@ClassicalCinema

Great Britain

Saturday 9^th August 2014

Soggy apple strudel. Hmm...

Hello, hello! I’m back! Did you miss me? Do not fear; theatrical activity has now resumed for the summer. It was on momentary hiatus while I jetted off here and there for business and pleasure. I made a trip to Austria for a few eventful days – alas not the trip but a work-related jaunt to Vienna. My attempts to swan about glamorously à la Baroness Schraeder, eat copious amounts of crisp apple strudel and stuff myself with schnitzel ‘altogether too delicious for my figure’ was somewhat thwarted when I caught a rather unpleasant lurgy. I’m quite sure nothing so indelicate ever happened to the Baroness. Perhaps I should have drunk more pink lemonade? Nevertheless, I did manage to sample a delicacy or two and to go on a tour of the famous Staatsoper. Do you know why it’s unlucky to whistle in an Opera House? Answers on a postcard...

Inside the Staatsoper

I then popped off to beautiful Lourdes for a glorious week. Curiously, this trip included several renditions of the ‘Sound of Music’ – on a French train... in a cafe... and in the hills themselves...

The hills are alive...

So, back in the UK, back to work, and back to the theatre. On Saturday, Terry had organised one of his famous trips to the National, this time to see Richard Bean’s new play, Great Britain. A swift, snappy take on the phone-hacking scandal, this was a late addition to the summer schedule, announced days after Andy Coulson’s sentencing.

The very dashing Anton Walbrook

My happy return to the National was preceded by a peaceful afternoon in Hampstead. I went to visit the grave of the magnificent Austrian actor, Anton Walbrook, at St John’s Church. Saturday was the forty-seventh anniversary of his death (though this was pure coincidence – I was unaware of this planning my trip). Born in Vienna in 1896 as Adolph Wohlbrück, Anton became a star on stage and screen in Austria and Germany in the early 1930s. One of his most famous films was the original, Viktor und Viktoria (1933), upon which, much later, Blake Edwards would base a musical. Half-Jewish, Walbrook fled the Nazis to England in 1936, anglicising his name. He quickly became well-known, appearing as Prince Albert in Victoria the Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938) and as the manipulative husband in the original version of Gaslight (1940). He then made a series of films for the Archers team of Powell and Pressburger. I first became aware of him when, as a child, I was terrified by his portrayal of the cruel impresario, Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes (1948). More recently, I have been blown over by his performance as the kindly and perceptive German officer, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). This is an extraordinary and very moving film about Anglo-German friendship in the midst of war. Walbrook lived in Hampstead and requested in his will that St John’s would be his final resting place. When he died in Bavaria from a heart attack at the age of seventy, his ashes were brought there. He deserves to be better remembered as a fine actor – dashing, mysterious, and mesmerising – who brought tremendous realism and intensity to his roles.  

Anton Walbrook's grave

St John’s is also the final resting place of several other famous names, including the artist, John Constable; the politician, Hugh Gaitskell; the actors, Gerald Du Maurier and Kay Kendall; and the author, Eleanor Farjeon. It’s a beautiful, leafy, peaceful spot in the midst of a bustling city.

I liked Hampstead a lot. I found a lovely Hungarian patisserie called Louis’, which served tea in china cups. Splendid.

And so to the National... Great Britain is an irreverent, hilarious, and relentless satire about the insidious power of the press. It follows the fortunes of a leading tabloid, The Free Press, and its ambitious news editor, Paige Britain (Billie Piper). Keen, determined, and seemingly without scruple, Britain is presented with journalistic gold dust by a rather doddering and naive source, who blithely lets her know the secret of accessing voicemails on another person’s mobile phone. She now has access all areas: to the murky world of forbidden love affairs – celebrity crushes, homosexual police chiefs, and politicians with prostitutes. Her ill-gotten gains give her great power. The Free Press wins the election for a Tory posh-boy, Jonathan Whey (Rupert Vansittart), but Paige has his secrets at her disposal. She also has the Metropolitan Police by the balls. Piper is bursting with energy as Britain, almost giddy with adrenaline. She thinks quickly, not deeply. She’s only interested in now, and now, and now, and more and more and more – the next story, the increasingly daring scoop.

The depiction of the Metropolitan Police Chief, Commissioner Sully Kassam, by Aaron Neil almost steals the show. Chosen for his ‘ethnic diversity’ rather than his intelligence, Sully is a liability. Self-labelled ‘the Gay Terminator,’ he is in a precarious position for a number of reasons. He’s being pursued by an angry Welsh lover; his force shows a dangerous aptitude for shooting innocent black guys; and, while attempting to be politically-correct, he suffers from chronic foot in mouth syndrome. When he’s not suggesting that more white men are shot to redress the imbalance, he’s voluntarily getting taser-ed on national tv. Aaron Neil plays Sully brilliantly – innocently and stupidly walking into every trap to the dismay of his second in command, Donald Doyle Davidson.

The newsroom set in the Lyttleton is built around three screens – when not being used as office partitions, they are put to great effect showing television clips and newspaper headlines. We live under attack from a constant barrage of rhetoric. The smug lecturing of ‘the Guardener’ and the farcical hysteria of the red-top press are parodied: ‘IMMIGRANTS EAT SWANS!’ Sully and his inane pronouncements are remixed as YouTube pop videos. We are also treated to extracts from trapped phone conversations. There’s an especially funny segment about the royals, in which Prince Charles is overhead telling Camilla that he hasn’t had a bath for a week, in order to experience what a real farmer smells like!

Although she’s wheedled her way into Westminster and Scotland Yard (gloriously rebranded New Mary Seacole Yard by Sully), Paige doesn’t have everything her own way. She does not get her hands of the editorship of The Free Press. Paschal O’Leary, the newspaper’s Irish proprietor, replaces the foul-mouthed, no-nonsense, Wilson Tikkel (Robert Glenister) with a vapid magazine editor from New York, Virginia White (whiter than white, perhaps?). Paige is angry, but in effect, Paschal has given her free reign. White is far too busy campaigning for horses’ rights in her Executive Suite to keep an eye on her phone-hacking hacks. How can she be expected to know what they’re up to?

Of course, we know these hacks went too far. The downfall of The Free Press comes with the kidnap of twin girls from a trailer-park. With insufficient evidence to convict the girls’ layabout father, the police are hamstrung, until Paige volunteers her ‘superhero’ services. Not only can she dish the dirt on Kieron Mills, she can successfully secure Davidson (by now her lover’s) appointment as Commissioner. Yet, several folks have become more than a bit suspicious. Other policemen have started sniffing around. A famous cricketer’s solicitor alleges his phone was hacked and his relationship consequently destroyed. A canny PR consultant plants a trash story about the Queen’s past in the Hitler Youth and it ends up in the paper. Then, everything crashes around Paige’s ears. The innocent Kieron Mills, branded a paedophile through trial by press, is murdered in jail. The girls are found dead and it’s revealed their phones were hacked. Davidson commits suicide. The Free Press is shut down and its journalists arrested. Is Paige sorry? Not very.

The cleverness of this play is that it’s bold and outrageous. The characters may be brash but they’re not only stereotypes. Yes, we aren't offered many insights into their lives outside the newsroom or their consciences (or lack thereof). Yet, their actions are all too familiar. The desperation of the over-privileged politician, seeking the support of the press to appear ‘normal’ to the masses is particularly recognisable. Bean is deliberately provocative and non-PC. The famous cricketer’s solicitor, Wendy Klinkard, has dwarfism – cue many groan-inducing jokes about disability, some made by Wendy herself. One can feel the audience deciding whether it’s appropriate to laugh! This in itself serves to highlight the overriding theme of the play. Bean is asking us: What is funny?  What is going too far?

In spite of all the laughter, Great Britain leaves a rather bitter taste in the mouth. This is not just because it exposes the dubious motives and methods of the press – we knew about them already – but because it also emphasises our – the readers’ – hypocrisy. As Paige herself states, nobody cared when the law was broken to expose two-timing celebrities or money-making politicians. We like hearing about the downfall of the rich and powerful. It sells papers. Paige corrupted a civil servant to buy a hard drive, exposing MPs’ abuse of their expenses and was hailed a heroine. Yet, everyone cared when the phones were hacked of two dead twins and she was named a criminal. If the twins had been found alive, would this still have been the case? Or would the illegality of hacking have been overlooked and The Free Press acclaimed? Where is the line between right and wrong? If we don’t like the gossip and scandal, why do we buy the papers? Are journalists simply giving us what we want, nay demand?

After the play was over and we gathered in the foyer to say our goodbyes, I spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Why did I know that man? I stared at him for a bit. He smiled slightly and I tried to be less obvious. A few minutes later it dawned on me. It was Hugh Fraser, a.k.a. Captain Hastings. Oh dear, my leetle grey cells were not on the ball. Poirot would have been unimpressed.

***

So there we are, back in theatrical business. Next stop, Trafalgar Studies on Saturday for Richard III... And today, today (after five hours in an online queue), I got tickets to see another Sherlockian in Shakespeare. Benedict who?