N.T. LIVE: "KING LEAR"

For various reasons, I've kind of lost touch with "N.T. Live" in recent months and missed more than a few shows. Sometimes this has been through circumstance, and sometimes through choice. I, for one, really didn't fancy the "horsey puppet show" for example, but other people seem to find it "fantastic" or "deeply moving" so it appears to have done quite well without me.

Anyway, after a bit of a break, we stormed back into the arms of "N.T. Live" by attending last night's viewing of "King Lear" in which Simon Russell Beale plays Shakespeare's eponymous tragic king in a production directed by Sam Mendes. If anything was likely to drag me back, then it was going to be Shakespeare, after having enjoyed stunning productions of "Macbeth", "Othello" and "Coriolanus" last year, and after all I've heard about Simon Russell Beale over the years, it really was about time I saw him doing his thing.

For those of you who still don't know what "N.T. Live" actually is, well, it's basically transmission of live theatre productions into cinemas around the country and the world, the initial broadcast happening simultaneously with its performance in the West End, the South Bank or, indeed, elsewhere, and has become a bit of a phenomenon in getting people to see theatre productions that they might otherwise never get to see, and in recording rather brilliant performances from actors at the top of their game for future generations to admire. Last night's show was, apparently, being broadcast to over 1000 theatres and 35 countries worldwide which isn't half bad and was probably far more "bums on seats" than the theatrical run could hope to muster.

Now, "Lear" is a long play, as I once discovered when I saw what I thought was going to be a "reduced" production by an independent Theatre Company a few years ago whilst I had raging toothache. They did the full text as I sat there, desperately waiting for the end, as wafts of an unwise application of clove oil drifted into the noses of the members of the audience unlucky enough to be near to me.

The length of the play meant a fairly early start, the usual anxiety about parking at the cinema, and the prospect of early interruptions as all those people who believe that all theatre must start at 7:30pm are allowed to come in and take their seats, but that didn't put me off and, because tickets for the evening were the "Mother's Day" treat the Beloved had bought for her mother, it was necessary for me to collect her from home whilst the Beloved herself made her way to the venue by public transport, and so we didn't have time for the usual pre-theatre meal.

No matter - I was still feeling pretty stuffed from the over-indulgences in restaurants during our recent weekend away, and skipping a meal or twelve really wouldn't do my waistline any harm.

Anyway, after getting the tickets and nattering over a cup of cinema coffee and a bag or two of crisps, we took our seats and, despite one or two noisy moments as the staff chatted in the doorway behind us, and one very unfortunate sound and vision problem towards the end of the first half, settled ourselves down to enjoy something which was a rather special piece of theatre.

In this version, Shakespeare's tragic tale of families, parents, daughters, old age and madness is given a suitably modern spin in which a central powerhouse of a performance by Simon Russell Beale which takes its cue from the idea that Lear's madness grew more out of dementia rather than anything else, and becomes all the more heart-breaking for that, and sometimes felt far more close to home than felt entirely comfortable.

I'm not going to dwell upon the plot, the scenery, the unexpected nudity (which is referenced in the text and therefore totally justifiable, and included a spectacularly funny aside from Tom Brooke playing Edgar…) or the fantastically brilliant cast because there are plenty of people far more qualified than I am to comment upon that, but, for me at least, it really was powerful stuff, and also made me think that a version of it could be very happily played out in the boardrooms and power dressing environment of TV's "The Apprentice" (with Lear played as Sir Alan…?) if anyone feels like taking a crack at that…?

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought that it was really very powerful stuff and did indeed gasp at some of the violence, which would, I hope, please the star of the show as he had suggested in his interviews.

My enjoyment was, it seems, despite the fact that some of the audience seemed to find the tragic ending (if it's not too much of a "spoiler" in a 410 year old play…) and all of the suicides "hilarious" and we left the auditorium listening to some idiot expounding upon how "far-fetched" they had found it all which kind of made me wonder why they'd bothered, if I'm being honest. After all, it's not as if you can't easily find out what it is that you're going to get with one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, is it?

Ah well, it was late at night, I suppose…

SHAKESPEAREAN INSULTS

As a little bit of a "stocking filler", I bought my Beloved a tiny little book of Shakespearean insults for Christmas. Unfortunately, when I picked it up in the actual genuine bookshop, and even when I was wrapping it up later, I didn't actually notice that it was a book of insults, thinking that I'd just got her a little collection of Shakespearean quotations.

So, one evening, and, despite all the evidence to the contrary, because I like to think that I'm rather adorable on occasions (in that slightly weird way I have), I picked up that self-same little book with a view to throwing about some conversational bon mots as we bantered the rest of the day away...

I got the impression that each page would reveal something appropriate to the situation of the moment and much hilarity would ensue.

God, I must be hell to live with...

You know the sort of thinking. It was a train of thought in much the same vein in which bible-ists used to pick up a New English and find that it would fall open at a page upon which their eyes would discover precisely the quotation to solve their immediate problem and go away in the belief that they were getting direct messages from above about how to live their life.

Praise be...

So, anyway... I flicked open a page and read out what it said, and the conversation unfolded as it will and, before you know it, I'd read out five or six of the things and noticed, rather to my growing alarm, that there was a trend developing, and none of the quotations that I'd read out seemed to have been a well-known phrase or saying that seemed in any way to be (or not to be) very positive...

"That's because" dead-panned the Beloved when I finally mentioned that I'd cottoned on to this "It's a book of insults..."

"Ah..."

Well, they do say that ignorance is bliss, although whoever it was who first coined that particular phrase (Thomas Grey I believe) probably hadn't just read out a stream of Elizabethan abuse at their Beloved from a book of insults that they had specifically bought in the flawed belief that it would be somehow endearing…

Two things we have learned from this. The first, I feel, is rather self-explanatory, so I won't insult your intelligence by underscoring it once again, but the second is always, always read the front cover...

You live, you learn...

R.S.C. LIVE: RICHARD II

Another week, another live streaming experience at the local kinemarette...

We'd had the tickets for ages of course, a massive investment to go and see a whole bucket of Shakespeare plays made at the same time that we booked for "Othello" back in those hopeful summery days when we still believed that we might just be able to plan a few nights out, and really couldn't have imagined how long our journeys back and forth to the hospital might continue to be going on for.

That particular situation has changed now, of course, but the tickets were still there and waiting to be used and so, after spending the day working from home in order to avoid the twitchiness involved with parking up my car with all of my bits and pieces stored inside of it, I packed up at the end of the day and headed off, full of the usual stomach-fluttering trepidation and anxieties which overwhelm me when an evening in a room full of "people" is in prospect, into the night-time traffic of a cold and damp late autumn evening in order to collect one passenger before meeting up with the beloved at the venue in question and get to see a bit of culture...

This was to see, of course, the Royal Shakespeare Company's first venture into the phenomenon of streaming a play live to cinemas around the country and around the world last Wednesday in the manner of those "N.T. Live" productions which I've been telling you about in these pages for a while now and, for a first attempt, they made a half-decent fist of it, given that this production of "Richard II" beamed direct from Stratford-Upon-Avon featuring one of the biggest stars of the current R.S.C., David Tennant, playing in a show which has become one of the hottest tickets in town was bound to be popular with audiences far beyond the Greater London area.

There were some teething troubles. Choosing a Wednesday for the simulcast probably wasn't the wisest of days, given that the "Orange Wednesday" phenomenon is already likely to be clogging up the car parks, the interval backstage interviews - whilst interesting in themselves - might have been a mistake, and the muffled sound for much of the preamble was something which left the entire audience worrying that the entire show would end up sounding as if it had been recorded through a few layers of walking sock.

There was also an unfortunate moment towards the end of the play, during Richard's final soliloquy when the uplink failed for a few seconds and the picture froze a couple of times finding the audience holding its collective breath less because of the compelling drama and more because of wondering whether we were going to get to see the end of the play at all.

What with that, and the venue not switching the auditorium lights on as we left or having functioning air-conditioning on a bitterly cold evening, the technical side was found slightly wanting, and the other equally local issue of the difficulties in leaving the car park did rather spoil the end of the evening for me, but that last issue, at least, is more down to the ignorance of other motorists and can't in all honesty be laid at the door of the people organising "R.S.C. Live..."

And what of the play itself...?

Now, to be perfectly honest with you, Dickie II (the sequel...?) was a play I was previously rather unfamiliar with. I knew that it wasn't the happiest of plays, but very little else about it, and so I sat down to watch it in a certain amount of ignorance, and was quite surprised when some of the most familiar phrases and speeches from the entire history of the English language turned out to be from this particular play... "This Sceptred Isle" and "Sad stories of the death of kings" both originate here as does, astonishingly "the leopard changing its spots" but those comments are more about my ill-education than the play itself.

Which was, quite naturally, quite the triumph that it has been reported to be.

David Tennant as Richard was astonishing, even by his own high standards, although on occasions his "girlish" look became rather disturbingly too girlish, if you know what I mean. There was solid support from brilliant actors like Michael Pennington playing John of Gaunt, and the frankly wonderfully Oliver Ford Davies as the constant fretting Duke of York. Jane Lapotaire made an astoundingly snotty Duchess of Gloucester during her one early but very key scene, marking her return to the R.S.C. stage after many years of enforced absence, and Emma Hamilton should be marked down as "one to watch" if you're not doing so already.

Meanwhile, the scenery and lighting was breathtaking, with images projected on to chain curtains proving immensely effective as creating vast areas in a less than massive space, and the judicious use of both a bridge and a pit, the entire "lid" of which stood upright towards the end of the play, was both an intriguing and imaginative way of extending the space and the levels.

So... "Richard II" was definitely a "hit" to me and, despite my qualms at the near three-hour running time, it's a play that I really think that I'd like to be returning to see again in future years.