The Globe x 2 - Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra June 2014

The Globe x 2: Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra, June 2014

                      Just being at the Globe is magical. I waxed lyrical about it on this blog last year after our London visit so I won’t do it again now. Yes, we visited it often. Yes, we looked through the shop several times and were very fortunate to be able to buy the DVDs, delivered to the shop just an hour earlier, of two of the plays we saw last summer, The Tempest and Macbeth. So we’re hoping and expecting to see the DVDs of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra in a year’s time.

Below you will find my reviews of these two plays.  But first I must mention our great appreciation to the members of the staff who noted that Hal walks with a cane and that our seats were in the highest row in the theatre for Julius Caesar.  We were escorted backstage (giving us glimpses of the cast, who nodded in a friendly way, and some props) to the staff lift in the depths of the Globe and up to our seats. In the pause we were met at our seats and escorted down again and back up. And again at the end. Wonderfully friendly helpful people. Thank you!

                      Now to the plays:

JULIUS CAESAR

• Directed by: Dominic Dromgoole
• Cast: Brutus – Tom McKay; Marc Antony – Luke Thompson; Cassius – Anthony Howell; Julius Caesar – George Irving; Octavius Caesar – Joe Jameson; Casca – Christopher Logan; Lucius – Keith Ramsay; Calpurnia– Kary Stephens; Portia – Catherine Bailey
• Seen: June 20, 2014

 Julius Caesar must be a hugely difficult play to do.  All that political talk – how to make it comprehensible and dramatic?

One way is to follow the script. It is Shakespeare after all. Wisely, director Dominic Dromgoole has made this choice. With a solid, mainly young, cast. This, possibly the most famous political drama of all time, proceeds scene by scene at a brisk pace.  I am engrossed from start to finish.

Because of my interest in Cassius I pay special attention to Anthony Howell’s interpretation. He’s really very good. Lean and hungry he is indeed. With a beautifully rich sonorous voice he argues, reasons, resents and grieves. Sadly a set of his best lines – “How many ages hence/ Shall this our lofty scene be acted over,/ In states unborn and accents yet unknown!.../ …So oft as that shall bee,/ So oft shall the knot of us be called/ The men that gave their country liberty…” – rather disappear in the drama of the assassination and the coughing of an unfortunate spectator near us, but his parting scene with Brutus is clear and wrenching.

There is little room for humour in this play but what there is is used well: Casca’s campy report on Caesar’s behaviour in the first scene, the silly jig after the angry confrontation between Brutus and Cassius, some of the citizens’ scenes and of course the mandatory and wonderful jig at the end.

Young Lucius, though a small role, deserves mention. Keith Ramsay plays it very well and he also has a most pleasant singing voice.

Sitting where we are – highest up in the last row in the centre – the visual effects are at their strongest. Just before the assassination as Cimber, Brutus and Cassius appeal to Caesar to pardon Cimber’s exiled brother, Cassius throws himself down prostrate at Caesar’s feet, his arms stretched out.  Very strong. Seconds later the assassination. Bright red blood on white togas starkly contrasting against the wooden stage.  Also the minimalist approach to the battle – six or seven soldiers in a rigid plunging dance – very rhythmic and oddly sensual.

The visual and audio effects of the three druids/muses who appear on the balcony above the stage singing in eerie disharmony after each death – of Caesar, of Cassius, of Brutus (here they appear on stage) – are very powerful.

It’s opening night and there are some wrinkles – dropped swords, fallen draperies, a certain stiff staginess at times, and sadly the two very potent roles of Calpurnia and Portia have not reached their full force.

We wonder too about the blood on the stage. Will they get it out before the next performance?  Or even before Antony and Cleopatra which we’re seeing the day after tomorrow? 

At the end the audience is jubilant and so are we.  Readers of Shakespeare Calling and the movie blog know that I can be very negative to film versions of Shakespeare’s plays and maybe one day I will be to a stage performance. Maybe even at the Globe.

But not this time.  I like this Julius Caesar very much indeed.

PS - We went back to the Globe a later evening and watched the activities in the lobby while waiting for the play to begin.  We so wanted to back and see it again but, alas, we didn’t have tickets.  But we saw some of the citizens and musicians give lively performances in the lobby, and both Calpurnia and Portia wafted in queenly majesty through the area.

                     

PPS – In fact we forgot to notice the blood on the stage while watching Antony and Cleopatra.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

• Directed by: Jonathun Munby
• Cast: Cleopatra – Eve Best; Marc Antony – Clive Wood; Octavius Caesar – Jolyon Coy; Octavia and Iras – Rosie Hilal; Enobarbus – Phil Daniels; Eros and Messenger – Peter Bankolé; Charmian – Sirine Saba; Soothsayer – Jonathan Bonnici; Alexas – Kammy Darweish
• Seen: June 22, 2014

 Readers of this blog know that it has been difficult for me to like Antony and Cleopatra which is why I have awaited this Globe performance with great curiosity.  Talking before the play with a very nice couple from Sheffield who say that Eve Best has been given rave reviews turns the anticipation up a notch.

And it does indeed start out well. It’s boisterous and colourful, festive and full of gusto.  It’s funny and lively.  Eve Best’s Cleopatra is bawdy and ironic and a great comic.  In her reeling-in-Antony-the-fish scene she flirts brazenly with a groundling and when he bites her finger she and the audience roar with laughter. I swear she blushes a little. Clive Wood as Antony does well. He too is funny, disrespectful, a bit of a lad, a lush actually.  One of the play’s most interesting characters is the shrewd and outspoken Enobarbus and Phil Daniels does him justice.  Eros and the Messenger are very well played by Peter Bankolé.  The first half ends in gold and glitter and great enthusiasm from both cast and audience.

But sadly, when the play should shift from humour to drama and tragedy, it doesn’t.  Cleopatra is not nearly as regal and imperious as she should be. Enobarbus, who in his repentance and suicide would have been so very strong if his final monologues had been subdued and introverted, is instead loud and melodramatic and a bit of a farce.  Antony plays for laughs right up to his death which becomes shallow and not at all as gripping as it should be.  After his death the play actually drags a bit until the scene with the asp.

Peter Bankolé plays his two roles with bravura all the way through, though,  and a good choice was made in having Cleopatra die quite quietly, sitting straight in her golden throne, and the play ends effectively with the three women dead on the stage.

And then the jig.

The verdict?  I like the play better than I did but mostly I see more clearly its potential. I do enjoy much of it and I’m glad to see it.  But it’s still not Shakespeare’s best, nor my favourite. 

So who cares?  It’s the Globe!

                     

For my texts on the two plays click on:

http://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.se/2012/10/he-reads-much-cassius-in-julius-caesar.html

http://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.se/2014/03/does-anybody-like-antony-and-cleopatra.html

Monday June 9 2104

Oh what a quiet Shakespeare week, as if the world of Shakespeare were holding its breath for bigger things to come.  Still, it’s never completely silent so here is this Monday’s report.

From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

• Lucifer, who as you know is usually considered the prince of demons and thus a villain, is actually “the bringer of light”, connected to Venus, the Morning Star, which the early Christians believed was the enemy of God. They’re so silly.  Anyway, Lucifer shows up in: King John, Henry IV:1, Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry IV:2, Henry V, and Henry VIII.
• Lud’s town, the early name of London, got its name from King Lud who, according to legend, was a Trojan hero who escaped to establish the British race. His name comes from a Celtic river god and he was the grandfather of Cymbeline. A likely story... Mentioned, reasonably enough, in Cymbeline, coming soonish on this blog.

Shakespeare sightings:

• In The Big Bang Theory, Season 6, Sheldon says to Leonard:  “This little dust-up between us is much ado about nothing” when Leonard plans to move in with Penny and Amy therefore plans to move in with Sheldon.
• Only one Shakespeare sighting – a record low!

Further since last time:

• Continued reading aloud with Hal: Antony and Cleopatra in preparation for seeing it at the Globe soon!  We’ll finish it this evening probably.
• Read: Shakespeare Today by Jane Shuter, bought on the net i.e. sight unseen. It turns out it’s for young people who know almost nothing about Shakespeare so not much I hadn’t known but interesting anyway.
• New comment on "Does Anybody Like Antony and Cleopatra?"  http://rubyjandshakespearecalling.blogspot.se/2014/03/does-anybody-like-antony-and-cleopatra.html?showComment=1402302569098#c7235924788900127192 

Posted this week:

• This Monday report.

Monday June 2 2014

This is the first of a couple of weeks of limbo as our trip to London approaches. It’s been a quiet week but the Shakespeare sightings are a bit unusual.

From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

• London Bridge was the only bridge across the Thames in Shakespeare’s day, indeed until 1750. It was not the first London Bridge but built in stone in the 13^th century and included buildings as well as a road. It figures in Henry VI:1 and Henry VI:2.
• Londoners themselves are only said by D&F to be mentioned in Henry VIII but of course they are in many if not all of the history plays.  Mistress Quickly and Doll Sheet come to mind and Falstaff and Prince Hal were certainly at home in Cheapside.

Shakespeare sightings:

• In a trailer for the film Tristan and Isolde they said, “Before Romeo and Juliet there was Tristan and Isolde.”  
• In the film The Libertine
•  John Malkovich’s King Charles II says to Johnny Depp’s Earl of Rochester:  “Elizabeth had her Shakespeare. You can be mine. Give me a major piece of literature...”
• Rochester tells Samantha Morton’s Lizzie Barry that he will make her a great Ophelia. He coaches her but she’s the one who makes herself a great Ophelia.
• She also mentions doing Desdemona.
• In the film Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky Bob, the literary pub waiter, says to Mr Saunders who’s written a sonnet in the Petrarchan manner, “The Petrarchan is different from the Shakespearean sonnet,” then goes on to the amazement of his colleagues and the other clients to explain the difference.
• On a very pleasant boat outing yesterday to an island in the Stockholm archipelago with Hal and a couple of good friends, I overheard a family discussing Romeo and Juliet. I refrained from participating.

Further since last time:

• Continued reading aloud with Hal: Antony and Cleopatra in preparation for seeing it at the Globe in a couple of weeks.
• Continued reading Shakespeare and Film – a Norton Guide by Samuel Crowl.

Posted this week:

• This Monday report.

Monday May 26 2014

Finally! Coriolanus, “Soldier Boy”.  Class and gender, that’s what emerges in my text . Not so unusual with me.  So much more could be written about this play but that will have to wait.  Now London is ahead of us. And the Globe. And Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. It’s getting hard to think of anything else.

From Davis and Frankforter’s The Shakespeare Name Dictionary.

• London – how serendipitous it is that we’re reading the L’s just now. D&F tell us that the name London is Celtic or even pre-Celtic.  It’s an old city.  It started to become influential in the 12^th century but it wasn’t until it developed into the centre of England’s trade that it became the administration and political centre as well. In Shakespeare’s day it had become the nation’s capital.  Shakespeare does not however place his plays in London so often and it figures only in the history plays: Henry VI:2, Henry VI:3, Henry VI:1, Richard III, King John, Richard II, Henry IV:1, Henry IV:2, Henry V, and  Henry VIII.

 Shakespeare sightings:

• In Dagens Nyheter there was a notice about poor old Richard III’s bones, found recently, as you may recall, in a parking lot in Leicester.  Historians want him to be buried in the Leicester Cathedral but his ancestors (yes, there are ancestors) want him to be buried in York where he was based. But he’ll stay in Leicester. Hurrah. History wins over inheritance.
• In the book The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, about how using the Internet is changing the way our brains function, mostly in a negative way according to him (I’m still not convinced  and I’ve finished it; it’s worth considering however), he describes memory with Hamlet’s words: “the book and volume of my brain.”
• On Fringe, Season 2, Episode 21, Walter says to Olivia: “Remember your Shakespeare, dear. ‘All the world’s a stage – or in this case, both worlds’.” As he, Olivia and the others are on their way to the other universe.
• In the novel Downriver by Iain Sinclair one of the characters “gasped and sneezed, turning his frailty to advantage, by pretending to be overcome by emotion: a Shakespearean soliloquy of pity for the human condition.” Unfortunately, not even a sentence about Shakespeare can make this book readable. It won lots of prizes but I gave up after about a hundred pages.  A pity. It was about London.
• Before the early evening news on Fridays old episodes of Colombo are shown.  We just happened into the few minutes in which a couple of actors are reading the newspaper reviews of their Macbeth. It ends up they were the murderers (I think) and one of them goes mad quoting “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”  How very literary of a 60’s TV detective series!

 Further since last time:

• Finished reading aloud with Hal: Julius Caesar in preparation for seeing it at the Globe in less than a month!
• Started reading aloud with Hal: Antony and Cleopatra in preparation for seeing it at the Globe in less than a month!
• Started reading Shakespeare and Film – a Norton Guide by Samuel Crowl.
• Being shown in cinema locations in England: The Tempest. This recording is of the production we saw last summer and will be released for sale in July.

Posted this week:

• This Monday report.
• “Soldier Boy” in The Tragedy of Coriolanus