Theatre: Julius Caesar

By William Shakespeare

Bell Shakespeare

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

August 8-11

Julius Caesar is a problematic play, and this is a problematic staging of it.

I’m not quite sure why Bell Shakespeare have taken it out on the road so soon (seven years) after they last mounted it, and I couldn’t find anything in particular compelling about it to have forced their hand.

Whether we’re to make anything of its extensive gender and ethnic impartiality (five of the historical and original male characters are played by women; Caesar by an African American), there’s nothing especially ground-breaking about it – indeed a major “drawcard” of Bell’s last crack at Caesar was the casting of Kate Mulvany, who also delivered a terse, concertinaed adaptation of the script, as Cassius.

Which leaves us with the problems of the play, and how Bell dealt with them, and it’s a mixed report card.

The elephant in the room (okay, allow me a little Hannibal joke) is Julius himself. The play is mistitled, of course – it should be Antony and Brutus, but Shakespeare obviously was saving the latter part of the title for Cleopatra. Julius is, after all, merely the victim of the play’s pivotal moment, and that happens fairly early on in the piece.

Before it, he does nothing other than ignore some ultimately good advice, change his mind a couple of times (so much for being “as constant as the northern star”) and wander into a one-way knife event.

He’s barely more important, either to his play or the parade of Shakespeare’s characters, than Duncan in Macbeth, and no-one has ever thought to re-name the Scottish Play after him.

Bell’s last Caesar, Alex Menglet, played him like an ailing Russian oligarch, which was a bit comic but made some useful points about the unsuitability of any individual to claim the entire apparatus of a modern state for themselves.

I could find no similarly useful points in Kenneth Ransome’s awkward portrayal of the general who  would be king.

On the other hand, Sara Zwangobani’s Mark Antony did bring something to her role. She stripped Antony’s great “friends, Romans, countrymen” of much of its rhetorical flourish and left it as the prowling, snarling incitement to slaughter it is.

Perhaps the production’s best – and most surprising – moment was the argument and reconciliation between the conspirators Brutus (Ivan Donato) and Cassius (Nick Simpson-Deeks) in IV.iii. They squabble and flatter each other like the doomed children they are while the pincers of the vengeful Antony and ambitious Octavius (Emily Havea, effective as a Prince on the cusp of her purple reign) close in on them.

From the end of Antony’s speech on, the playing out of Julius Caesar is as weakly constructed and written as anything in Shakespeare.

To their credit, Donato and Simpson-Deeks at least made it worth sitting through.

Theatre: The Merchant of Venice (★★★)

By William Shakespeare
Bell Shakespeare
Director Anne-Louise Sarks
Designer Michael Hankin
Lighting designer Paul Jackson
Composer and Sound designer Max Lyandvert
Featuring Jo Turner, Damien Stouthos, Fayssal Bazzi, Shiv Palekar, Jessica Tovey, Catherine Davies, Mitchell Butel, Jacob Warnet, Felicity McKay and Eugene Gilfedder
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until August 26

The first clue to how this Merchant of Venice was to be treated was not long in coming, and impossible to miss.
The characters kneel in sombre rows for the Lord’s Prayer, while, in their midst, two figures, non-participants in the rituals of devotion and power, stand faithless the midst of the faithful.
Shylock, the Jewish financier, and his daughter Jessica.
So, as it has been for two centuries at least (though it was not intended to be originally), Shakespeare’s crafty little romantic comedy is, instead, made to be about the grinding against each other of culture and belief and the scouring of the outsider.
Harold Bloom puts it perfectly; The Merchant of Venice is not a play about Anti-Semitism – it is simply a profoundly anti-Semitic play. And the problem when staging it, the clash of modern sensibility and four-centuries-old theatre-making, is wrapped up in Shylock.
It’s worth remembering that the next play Shakespeare brought to the stage was Henry IV; Falstaff, the great deviser, was just around the corner. Shylock is no Falstaff, but the power of independent personality, soon to explode in the fat old knight, is in him, and, ironically, he fatally unbalances the play.

Theatre: Othello (★★★½)

By William Shakespeare
Bell Shakespeare
Director Peter Evans
Designer Michael Hankin
Lighting designer Paul Jackson
Composer/ sound designer Steve Toulmin
Featuring Ray Chong Nee, Yalin Ozucelik, Elizabeth Nabben, James Lugton, Michael Wahr, Edmund Lemnke-Hogan, Joanna Downing, Alice Keohavong and Huw McKinnon

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Until August 20

Donald Trump may boast, “I am what I am”, but Shakespeare’s irreplaceable villain will have none of it.
Iago (Yalin Ozucelik) warns us, in the first minutes of his play, “I am not what I am”, and tells us much more besides; his hatred of his brilliant general, Othello (Ray Chong Nee), the reason for it, and his lethal intention.
We’ve barely opened this whodunnit, and we already know its who, why and how. The many surprises that follow arise from Iago’s sheer audacity.
He is an improviser and a tightrope walker. He sets action in motion and exploits whatever emerges to his best advantage.
And, ironically, it’s the one thing he plans in advance that brings him undone.
This Othello may not quite reach the heights of last year’s dazzling Hamlet, but it’s another reason for us to be grateful to Bell Shakespeare for bringing us fine productions of some of the greatest works of the world’s theatre. 

Read the complete review in The West Australian  

Theatre: Hamlet (★★★★½)

Matilda Ridgeway and Josh McConville

By William Shakespeare 
Bell Shakespeare
Director Damien Ryan
Designer Alicia Clements
Lighting designer Mat Cox
Featuring Josh McConville, Matilda Ridgway, Sean O’Shea, Doris Younane, Ivan Donato, Michael Wahr, Philip Dodd, Robin Goldsworthy, Julia Ohannessian and Catherine Terracini
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Until August 16

The Prince is on a roll. There are all-night queues for Benedict Cumberbatch’s West End stand, and Bell Shakespeare’s short season at the Heath Ledger is a sell-out.
As it should be.
This Hamlet, with its clear and intelligent direction by Damian Ryan, should completely satisfy both aficionados and newcomers to the greatest of plays. If that’s too bold a claim for the play, there’s no doubting its hero is the first of drama’s characters. He utterly dominates his play, physically and intellectually. He speaks a third of its 4,000 odd lines; it needs no secondary plots or truly independent second lives.

Theatre: Henry V

By William Shakespeare
Bell Shakespeare
Director Damien Ryan
Designer Anna Gardiner
Lighting designer Sian James-Holland
Composer and sound designer Steve Francis
Featuring Michael Sheasby, Matthew Backer, Drew Livingston, Damien Strouthos, Gabriel Fancourt, Eloise Winestock, Danielle King, Darcy Brown, Keith Agius and Ildiko Susany
Heath Ledger Theatre until August 26, then at regional centres.

Keith Agius and cast (pic: Michele Mossop)

William Shakespeare wouldn’t be shocked by the horror in Ukraine and Gaza. He had seen into the hearts and minds of those who fire the rockets, those who give the orders, those who fall and those who loot, before, and understood their contents exactly.

His Henry V can easily be seen as a glorious procession and a strident hymn of patriotism, the soul of the idol washed clean with noble blood, but there’s little sanguinity, and much darkness, behind its flash and colour.
The director Damien Ryan works impressively to strip Henry’s glamour away. Setting the play in the temporary schoolroom of a bomb shelter during the London blitz, being performed by students, is a brilliant conceit, bringing its themes of patriotism, idolatry, propaganda and terror into sharp focus.
It’s only been a couple of years since I said Propeller’s testosterone-driven Henry V was the best I was ever likely to see. That’s remains true, but there won’t be many better, or more interesting, than this one.       

Link here to the complete review in the West Australian

Theatre: Henry 4

By William Shakespeare

Adapted by John Bell

Bell Shakespeare

Director John Bell and Damien Ryan

Designer Stephen Curtis

Lighting designer Matt Scott

Composer Kelly Ryall

Featuring David Whitney, Matthew Moore, John Bell, Terry Bader, Jason Klarwein, Ben Wood, Nathan Lovejoy, Yalin Ozucelik, Felix Jozeps, Sean O’Shea, Arky Michael, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Wendy Strehlow and Matilda Ridgeway

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Until April 13

Matthew Moore

It was a sad surprise to find, from conversations around the Heath Ledger foyer, that Shakespeare’s Henry IVs have become obscure.

In its time, Henry IV Part One was a runaway hit, its first part spawning three sequels, one, Henry V, for its putative hero, Prince Hal, and two, Henry IV Part Two and The Merry Wives of Windsor, for its genius, Falstaff. Such was the enthusiasm for Falstaff that Elizabethan audiences traditionally booed the hero king on his first entry in Henry V for having banished their favourite.

Shakespeare, too, had to banish Falstaff from Henry V, because the Fat Knight was bound to steal that show as surely as he had both its predecessors.

And, true to form, John Bell’s Falstaff sidles away with this merged adaptation of the two Henry IV’s tucked securely in his capacious pickpocket’s breeches.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian. 

Theatre: The School for Wives

 By Moliére

Translated by Justin Fleming

Bell Shakespeare

Director Lee Lewis

Designer Marg Horwell

Lighting designer Niklas Pajanti

Composer Kelly Ryall

Featuring John Adam, Harriet Dyer, Meyne Wyatt. Andrew Johnston, Alexandra Aldrich, Damien Richardson, Jonathan Elsom and Mark Jones  

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Until July 14

There hasn’t been a production of the great French dramatist Moliére’s work in Perth since the Georgian Film Actors Studio Theatre presented Don Juan at the 1990 Perth Festival. Edgar Metcalfe’s The Misanthrope at the Hole in the Wall 32 years ago was the last local professional show. That’s far too long to be deprived of one of the kings of comedy.

Fortunately, Bell Shakespeare has departed from its eponymous mainstay to take The School for Wives, Moliére’s satire of pre-nuptual shenanigans, on the road around Australia, and it’s to be admired for its endeavour and the technical quality of its touring productions.

Unfortunately, the production misfires. This is largely because of a translation from the original French verse into something like vernacular Australian English by Justin Fleming that too often sounds like The Sentimental Bloke or, worse, that cringeworthy, milquetoast rap that infects so many attempts to be street-wise these days.

Things lifted dramatically, though, whenever Harriet Dyer’s sweetly determined Agnes was on stage, and the climactic confrontation between her and Arnolde was far and away the most convincing scene in the play. Director Lee Lewis places the piece attractively in 1920s Paris, and designer Marg Horwell and lighting designer Niklas Pajenti support her cleverly with a silent movie-inspired setting that is apt and greatly entertaining. Mark Jones, a dead ringer for the comedian Bill Bailey, also plays upright piano, bells and whistles, and keeps the whole affair nicely in tune throughout. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian    

Theatre: The Winter's Tale

By William Shakespeare

Propeller

Directed by Edward Hall

Designed by Michael Pavelka

His Majesty’s Theatre

Until February 25

It’s a bonus, this late tale of William Shakespeare, here in a gorgeous looking, beautifully spoken and often riotously staged production by the English company, Propeller.

The bonus is perhaps also the reason The Winter’s Tale doesn’t rank higher among Shakespeare’s plays, despite containing some of his finest writing and most vivid characters: it’s really two short plays yoked together, worlds apart in style and substance. The good news is that Propeller revels in their differences, and does both more than justice.

Theatre: Julius Caesar

By William Shakespeare
Bell Shakespeare

Director Peter Evans

Dramaturg Kate Mulvany

Designer Anna Cordingley

Lighting designer Paul Jackson

Composer Kelly Ryall

Featuring Alex Menglet, Colin Moody, Daniel Frederiksen, Kate Mulvany, Benedict Hardie, James Wardlaw, Gareth Reeves, Keith Agius, Katie-Jean Harding, Rebecca Bower   

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Until August 20

Kate Mulvany

The soldier-politician Julius Caesar should not be king of Rome. He’s past his prime, deaf in one ear, epileptic, superstitious and sentimental. In any case, Rome doesn’t have a king.

Trouble is, after decades of explosive imperial expansion and a brutal civil war, it could really use one.

A hard core of the Roman elite still clings to the old republican political model, but out on the street that’s a tired and outdated concept. It’s an untenable mix, and that can only mean blood.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian