The main thing in life is to fill one’s belly. Peer Gynt.

With Peer Gynt things are progressing very slowly and finishing in the autumn is out of the question. It is a terribly intractable subject, except in some places, such as where Solveig sings, which I have already completed. And then I have produced something for the “Hall of the mountain king“, which I literally cannot stand to listen to, it rings so of cow dung, of Norwegian-Norwegian-ness, and to thyself be enough-ness! Edvard Grieg.

Henrik Ibsen left Norway, for what he thought would be permanent exile, in the spring of 1864. In or near Rome he wrote Brand and published it in 1866. He then wandered south to Ischia and Sorrento where he worked on Peer Gynt, which was finally published in Copenhagen in 1867. He was thirty-eight years old and would not return to Norway for twenty-seven years.

Ibsen’s Norway consists mainly of a stuffy, provincial middle-class, redeemed by a smattering of upright, sometimes fiery individuals of real initiative and courage. But Peer Gynt is something else. Derived from Norwegian folk-lore, he is a single typical national type; all the defects Ibsen saw in his fellow countrymen are to be found in Peer. He is at most half-hearted about life, egotistical and characterless. He finds it impossible to commit himself to anything and seemingly drifts from one situation to another without rhyme or reason. He is a man without principle; he is mediocre and morally shabby.

But at the same time Peer Gynt is also a representative of mankind. Like King Lear, he carries within himself something of all of us. He has that anarchic trait which allows us to spin out of control, to become one with our imagination, to let go of all the constraints that imprison our spirit.

Edvard Munch's design for the Peer Gynt Playbill

Marilyn Munroe at the Actor's Studio - Picture by Ray Schatt

Marilyn Munroe was deeply concerned with her identity throughout her life. Babtised as Norma Jeane Baker and abandoned by her mother, she spent much of her childhood in foster homes. As a high profile actress people frequently confused her image with her true self. These factors combined with her quest for an inner peace hint at an answer to the attraction of Strasberg’s teachings.

Strasberg worked with all the heavies, James Dean, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, Robert De Niro, Steve McQueen, Jane Fonda, and Al Pacino. But he maintained that the two greatest were Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe.

At this time she also entered analysis but never fully managed to overcome her inner battle; she regarded “Marilyn Monroe” and her true self as two different entities.

On her death Marilyn Monroe willed the control of 75% of her estate to Lee Strasberg, including the licensing of her image, as gratitude for his mentorship and kindness.

Others who have been associated with the Actors Studio include Edward Albee, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Hopper, Sidney Lumet, Norman Mailer, Steve McQueen, Sean Penn, Sidney Poitier, Tennessee Williams and Shelley Winters.

“The truth concerning the passions, verisimilitude in the feelings experienced in the given circumstances, that is what our intelligence demands of a dramatist.”
Pushkin’s aphorism

“Create your own method. Don’t depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.” Konstantin Stanislavsky

There is an interesting two-part documentary on the relationship between Munroe and Strasberg, which is well worth a few minutes of your time:

and

Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. Mercutio.

Jonjo O'Neill as Mercutio

In the original story, the lovers’ affair lasted for several months. But Shakespeare compressed the plot into a period of less than four days. The action opens on Sunday morning and ends at dawn on the following Thursday. Everything happens in a flash, the action takes place in an incandescent moment. On her balcony, the fourteen-year-old Juliet (Mariah Gale) tries to explain:

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say ‘It lightens.’

We were at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Romeo and Juliet, directed by Rupert Goold.

A really excellent production in which the love and affection between the two principles (especially Sam Troughton’s Romeo) is never in doubt. And although they are progressively marginalized and isolated by the actions of their parents and elders, it is always obvious that the play is theirs, an anthem for doomed youth.

Mariah Gale plays Juliet as a sulking adolescent, gradually adding gravitas as the events of the play unfold.

Both leads are amply supported by the presence of Noma Dumezweni in her role as Juliet’s nurse. I’ve never seen this part done better.

But the thunder of the performance is stolen by Jonjo O’Neill as Romeo’s friend, Mercutio. After he is killed by Juliet’s hot-tempered cousin, Tybalt, much of the wit and pace and imagination of the play is lost. But don’t let this put you off, the production is worth seeing for the part of Mercutio alone.

During the eighteenth century Shakespeare’s play was ‘improved’ by the addition of extra dialogue. A new scene was incorporated in which Juliet wakes from her trance before Romeo has begun to feel the effects of his own poison. They could therefore converse and take their eternal farewell. Thus was the play dragged into the mire of sentiment for over a hundred years.

But although this production is not devoid of laughs, it steers well clear of sentiment, and allows us to leave the theatre with a real feeling for the tragedy of the two lovers.

“I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me…”

We were at the Royal Exchange in Manchester to see Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors directed by Roxana Silbert.

Some years ago, Egeon, his wife Aemilia, their twin sons and twin servants were shipwrecked. Egeon, one son and one servant were separated from the rest and have travelled the world in search of their other halves ever since. Now they meet again, initially with potentially drastic consequences.

This is a short play with a young and enthusiastic cast, packed with sparkling and frothy humour, both physical and verbal, and is hugely enjoyable.

Of particular note are the costumes, designed especially for this production and reminiscent of Vivian Westwood and Steve McQueen. And for me, the excellent performances were capped by that of Owain Arthur as the servant Dromio of Ephesus. But this is to take nothing away from the rest of the cast.

Later we went to the excellent Tai Wu restaurant in Oxford Street, and enjoyed some Cantonese food. And even though the evening had to end up in the eerily silent and abandoned John Lennon airport at 2.30 am, the enthusiasm and vivacity of the play continued to sustain.

The Comedy of Errors will continue until the 8th May.

I’ve made a great discovery. . . and I’ll tell you what it is: the strongest person in the world is the one who stands alone
Dr. Tomas Stockmann.

Henrik Ibsen’s opening play at the newly refurbished Sheffield Crucible, is An Enemy of the People, with Anthony Sher in the role of Dr Stockmann.

It’s a disturbing drama, constituting an attack on democracy and the theory of majority rule, a position with which Ibsen himself had some sympathy.

Stockman, a scientist and an idealist, quite unworldly in this production, almost a natural innocent, discovers that the waters of his Spa town are polluted and poisonous. He immediately wants to go public with this news, shut the Spa down and, at whatever expense, cleanse and reroute the water. But his brother, the Mayor, suppresses the report. The bureaucrats, the local small businessmen’s association, the town newspaper and eventually the workers of the town, turn on Stockman, his family and his friends, and reduce them to penury.

The play works as a forum for ideas. For a modern audience to empathize with Stockmann entirely is almost impossible. He does, of course, stand for truth against the suppression and lies of his brother and the other organs of the democratic process, but he does not understand the need to educate his audience and become instead self-righteous and arrogant and a chilling and contemptuous social darwinist in his remarks about “disgusting, mangy, vulgar mongrels” whose brains don’t develop in the same manner as gently reared pedigree dogs.

On the other hand his sense that truth, any truth, has a limited lifetime, and that time always brings us round to the realisation that what was once true has now become untrue, is never less than fascinating.

And his fear that the suppression of material facts and the acceptance of political lies will lead, inevitably, to a kind of spiritual corruption and decay of society, is a companion to each of us in the twenty-first century.

A disturbing play, then; one that still, in our own time, offers an audience no place to hide.

This production, directed by Daniel Evans, with Antony Sher as Dr Stockmann, in a new version by Christopher Hampton, runs until the 20th March.

If you go out and fight for freedom you should never do so in your best trousers.
Dr. Tomas Stockmann.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a production of the play, and I certainly came to Newcastle with some expectations for the language and power that Shakespeare added to the brew.

As Caesar’s legend and popularity look set to take him to the throne, his inner cabinet and friends conspire to prevent what they fear will become a dictatorship. His assassination, however, unleashes civil strife and a bloody and relentless war.

In order to give the audience some idea of the mob and the people of Rome, much use is made of video projections onto a series of screens, together with cheers and jeers and various other city-like sounds. Although this is very professionally done, it never seems to work, proving to be more of a distraction from the main action of the play, and therefore undermining it more than adding to its effectiveness.

Sam Troughton as Brutus turns in a troubled performance of the philosopher statesman transforming himself into a soldier, not helped at all by a wardrobe that verges at times on the brink of gender ambiguity.

Darrell D’Silva is an interesting and slightly overweight Mark Antony who comes close to overplaying his main speech, as though he doesn’t really believe the inner power of the text.

John MacKay is impressive as Cassius, tall and thin and needy and, quite surprisingly, he drew more sympathy from me than Brutus.

Greg Hicks, is an arrogant Caesar. Perhaps too young and lacking in gravitas, but believable nevertheless, and bringing some humour into the proceedings.

For me, Hannah Young’s performance as Portia, especially in her scene with Brutus, was the most moving and memorable of the evening.

This was not a great production and ultimately disappointing. It gives a taste of the play’s possibilities without really delivering. Julius Caesar returns to Stratford-upon-Avon in Summer 2010 for a limited number of performances.

Derived from and inspired by the 14th-century Chinese play Circle of Chalk, Brecht changes the ending so that the child lives, not with his birth mother but with the mother who cares for him most. Echoes of the Judgement of Solomon here.

I was more than a little thrown by the perceived need for a new translation. The original translation into English was by by Brecht’s close friend and admirer, Eric Bentley, who also went on to direct the first professional production of the play. This new version has been translated by Alistair Beaton, and I suppose in a way it’s brought the Caucasian Chalk Circle up to date as far as language is concerned. But I thought it added little and detracted more than once from the historical perspective of the play.

Grusha, the servant-girl, played by Matti Houghton, is excellent; as is Azdak, the judge, played nonchalantly by James Clyde.

Nancy Meckler directs a tale of justice, corruption and morality, not entiely flawlessly. The first act seems too linear and is one-paced, and by the time of the interval I was looking for something to happen.

In the second act the linearity of the piece falls apart and out of the ruins of that something very special begins to happen. The audience is engaged in a way that seemed impossible during the first hour and, in spite of Brechts stated aim that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action, but should instead provoke self-reflection and a critical view, I was definitely moved here, and touched deeply by the experiences of these characters. Not least when the child, Michael, previously only seen as a bunch of swaddling, miraculously morphs into a toddling and wholly engaging puppet.

During the course of the play one is reminded, inevitably, of other theatrical experiences and references. In the case of this performance I was haunted by the spectres of Chaplin and Beckett, an actor and director who was perhaps a contemporary, and a playright who would follow and extend the work of the early modernists.

After Leeds the play tours to:
Richmond Theatre, Richmond 20-24 Oct 2009;
Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham 4-21 Nov 2009; and the Unicorn Theatre, London 24 – 29 Nov 2009