The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:
(Think) about the inner side of a role, and how to create its spiritual life through the help of the internal process of living the part. You must live it by actually experiencing feelings that are analogous to it, each and every time you repeat the process of creating it. (AP)
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(Kate Wyver’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/22; via Pam Green; Photo: Exploration of transgression … Corey Montague-Sholay (Prince Hal), Joni Ayton-Kent (Sam), Mary Malone (Jen) and Abigail Thorn (Hotspur) in The Prince. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian.)
Southwark Playhouse, London
YouTube philosopher Abigail Thorn moves offline and on to the stage with an ambitious exploration of identities and the performance of gender
Using the intelligent wit that makes Abigail Thorn’s YouTube channel so popular, The Prince playfully questions the performance of gender and the roles we are all assigned. Thorn is the host of Philosophy Tube, a channel discussing philosophy in creative, accessible ways. The writer swaps screen for stage in this ambitious if slightly feverish exploration of transgression and transition within Shakespeare’s plays.
The hilarious Jen, played radiantly by Mary Malone, is our comic tether to reality. When it’s revealed that she’s trapped inside a Shakespearean multiverse and is currently wandering around Henry IV Part One – a slightly stodgy but enthusiastic version – her response is to yell “I bloody hate Shakespeare” and attempt to call the police. Her innocence serves as an outstretched hand to the audience, helping us understand the motivations of the characters she’s reluctantly stuck with.
As she searches for an escape route, Jen is drawn to Henry “Hotspur” Percy, the warrior and Prince played with smouldering dignity by Thorn. Recognising Hotspur as trans, at odds with the male role she is playing, Jen begins interrupting the action. This is when the fun really starts, as she encourages the characters to question their written roles, and the matrix starts to crumble. Softer, free-wheeling voices replace the stoic verse, and queer punk aesthetic rips apart the period clothing.
(from Eyewitness News 7, 9/16; via Drudge Report..)
NEW YORK (WABC) — “Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running show and an icon of New York City theater, will close early next year.
The show announced Friday it will commemorate its 35th anniversary Jan. 26, and then stage its final performance on Broadway on Feb. 18.
Mayor Eric Adams attended the show earlier this month, kicking off Broadway Week with an appearance to celebrate the theater district’s resilience in the wake of the pandemic.
Bottom of Form
Phantom has been the longest-running show in Broadway history for well over a decade.
On Broadway alone, the musical has played more than 13,500 performances to 19.5 million people at The Majestic Theatre on West 44th Street.
(Nick Ahad’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/14; Photo: Compelling … Guy Rhys (Benedick) and Daneka Etchells (Beatrice) in Much Ado About Nothing at the Crucible, Sheffield. Photograph: Johan Persson.)
Crucible, Sheffield
Daneka Etchells is the most compelling Beatrice you might ever see in an exceptional production of the romantic comedy
Post lockdown, theatres are looking for sure things and bets don’t come much safer than the wittiest of Shakespeare’s romcoms. Sheffield Theatres and Ramps on the Moon bring this production of Much Ado to the stage just a couple of days after the National Theatre brought down the final curtain on its own. If London audiences missed out, they should head to this exceptional and exceptionally moving version of a bulletproof piece.
A number of aspects elevate the production. One is the involvement of Ramps on the Moon, which aims to normalise the presence of deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people on British stages. Another is the most compelling Beatrice you might ever see: Daneka Etchells plays this script like a maestro, somehow finding new notes in lines that are four centuries old, even making some of it feel like it was written yesterday. When Beatrice’s shield of wit is pierced by heartbreak, Etchells, who is autistic, can’t suppress her – or the character’s – physical tics and watching her resolve to remain calm is deeply affecting.
(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/9; via Pam Green; Photo: Marion Bailey as the Queen in Handbagged at the Tricycle theatre (now the Kiln), London, in 2013. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian.)
The monarch was sympathetically depicted by dramatists and at a 1999 production of Oklahoma! her eyes lit up when she recalled her own theatrical outings
“I’ve never been fond of the theatre.” So says Q (an older Queen Elizabeth II) in Moira Buffini’s Handbagged. Two things strike me about that statement: we have no idea if it is true and, if it is, the sentiment is certainly not reciprocated. Looking back at theatre over the last four decades, it is fascinating to see how often the late Queen was portrayed on the British stage and how sympathetically she was seen in contrast to the passing parade of politicians.
In Shakespearean drama monarchy is often equated with solitude. Richard II is aware of the vanity of ceremony and achingly cries that a king “needs friends”. Henry IV is racked by guilt and even Henry V, on the eve of Agincourt, dwells on the tragic isolation of kingship.
And it’s not just in Shakespeare. Elizabeth I in Schiller’s Mary Stuart is haunted by the responsibility for the death of her cousin, and Philip II in Don Carlos ruminates on filial treachery. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown: it is a constant theme of world drama.
Even in the age of constitutional monarchy, that strain recurs. What is more striking is the way Elizabeth II was often seen as a repository of quiet wisdom. The first dramatist to treat her seriously was Alan Bennett in A Question of Attribution at the National Theatre in 1988. In one scene the monarch (played by Prunella Scales) confronts Anthony Blunt, who was both surveyor of the Queen’s pictures and a Communist spy.
With canny skill, she steers Blunt on to the subject of artistic forgery and suggests that it may sometimes be better not to express doubts about a painting’s provenance: “Stick to the official attribution rather than let the cat out of the bag and say, ‘Here we have a fake.’” Which is exactly what the monarchy did with the perfidious Blunt.
The scene is obviously Bennett’s invention but the Queen’s public reticence gives the dramatist poetic licence. That ability to recreate Elizabeth II on one’s own terms was exploited to great effect by Sue Townsend in her bestselling book and subsequent 1994 play, The Queen and I. Townsend’s premise was that, in a new republic, the whole Royal family had been transplanted to a Leicester housing estate. The play was clearly an attack on a world of inherited privilege. Yet even here the Queen emerged, in Pam Ferris’s performance, as a likable figure liberated from a world of cosseted ritual and able to discover her hidden talents.
The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:
Aside from the fact that it opens up avenues for inspiration, living the part helps the artist to carry out one of his main objectives. His job is not to present merely the external life of his character. He must fit his own human qualities to the life of this other person, and pour into it all of his own soul. The fundamental aim of our art is the creation of this inner life of a human spirit, and its expression in an artistic form. (AP)
(via DW)
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