Julius Caesar / Théâtre Gérard Philipe

Julius Caesar

Théâtre Gérard Philipe

15-28 November 2010, 7.30pm Mon-Fri; 6pm Sat; 4pm Sun; no performance Tues.
6-20 euros
In English with French subtitles

***

Produced in partnership with the Centre Dramatique National/Orléans-Loiret-Centre, the American Repertory Theatre stage Shakespeare's great study of tyranny, revolution, and civil war, against a slick dreamscape of 1960s America.  A live jazz band, iconic 60s stage furniture and a set of epic, roman proportions combine to make this ambitious project a highly original, if not consistently convincing, reevaluation of the relationship between the political image and the political word.

French director Arthur Nauzyciel produced this play specifically for French audiences, the vast majority of whom, at least in part, rely on the French subtitles displayed above the stage.  It is therefore understandable that the pace at times seems slow and particular lines rather laboured, enunciated to an awkward degree for those familiar with Shakespeare's work.  The actors are successful in allowing for the greatest possible degree of first-hand understanding for non-native speakers, and thus convey well the cadence of the play's original language, whilst synchronising the words spoken on the stage with those appearing above it.  However, key relationships between characters suffer as lines are often delivered straight out to the audience, the actors staring into the middle distance rather than at each other.  Most notably the early dialogues between Cassius and Brutus ( Mark L. Montgomery and James Waterson), fail to create a sense of intimacy between the two conspirators.

The production draws its energy from the play's most iconic scenes; Caesar's assassination at the Capitol (Act 3, scene 1) and Mark Antony's oration beginning "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears".  As Caesar (Thomas Derrah) lies murdered before them, Nauzyciel has his players literally enact Brutus' instructions to "Stoop, Romans, stoop/And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood/Up to the elbows", creating a most disturbing tableau of sharply suited men dripping blood on to the Senate floor.  However, the strength of the production's references to 1960s America spring not from this implicit allusion to the Kennedy assassination, but rather from the staging of Antony's funeral speech, that great icon of rhetoric.  Stood beneath a huge overhead microphone, Daniel Pettrow masterfully plays with Shakespeare's slippery verse, flinging rhetorical questions out to the full auditorium before him and the empty one seen behind him; and is answered with the sound of the people's swelling rage, piped around the theatre.  Waterson prowls around the periphery of the stage, watching on as his rival's consummate skill as a politician and rhetorician turns from positive spin to implicit damnation as Pettrow systematically inverts the meaning of the very language of politics.  In the first act of the play, Brutus says of self-knowledge and of image "the eye sees not itself,/But by reflection, by some other things"; and it is Antony's rhetoric which ultimately dictates how Rome sees Brutus and through this how Rome sees itself, "You all did love him once, not without cause:/What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?"  That the audience looks on to a mirror image of their own empty seats during this scene, serves as a reminder of one's own susceptibility to the power of the spoken word, that in the world of high politics each countryman is a mere pawn to stylised manipulation.

The main problem with the production is Nauzyciel's preoccupation with Lucius, Brutus' trusted servant boy, who is allocated 24 short lines in Shakespeare's play but here is played by Jared Craig as a transcendental, death and dumb spectator of Roman political folly, artificially planted into several climactic scenes.  Nauzyciel uses the character of Lucius as an embodiment of innocence and the political naivety of Brutus; when the latter lays down to die, his servant mirrors his actions in an effective inversion of filmic representation of the parting of the soul and the body in death.  But his presence, dressed in an infantile superman t-shirt and gold sparkly cape, on the battlefields is ridiculous and undermines the gravitas of the conspirators' death scenes.  The character of Lucius is indeed intended to reveal the humanity of Brutus, for when the boy falls asleep over his instrument Shakespeare has Brutus say "It is no matter:/Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber"; it is unnecessary to use his character as an artificial avatar of such subtleties.

Overall, a very enjoyable, if flawed, production, with an outstanding performance from Daniel Pettrow.

Interiors / Théâtre des Abbesses



Interiors

Théâtre des Abbesses
2-6 November 2010
8.30pm everyday + 3pm matinee Sat.
13-24 euros
In English with French subtitles

**

In Matthew Lenton's award-winning production of Maurice Maeterlinck's 1895 drama Intérieur the audience watches a family meal through huge panes of glass front of stage; the metaphoric fourth wall is physically constructed and effectively divides "us" and "them", the public and the not-so private.  The domestic situation is familiar, the voyeuristic perspective afforded by the beautiful, expressionistic set disturbing.  We cannot hear what the characters say but their conversation and their private thoughts are relayed to us by an anonymous, omnipotent narrator (Elspeth Brodie).

In Maeterlinck's original, the audience watches through a window as the family within is informed of the death of one of their daughters.  The horror of death is concentrated by the petri dish proportions of the spectators to the spectated as the audience helplessly watch a scene of cosy domestic happiness slide into the chaos of despair.  In Lenton's interpretation, no tidings of death are brought to the family and the production instead focuses on the banal minutiae of family life; petty jealousies, boredoms, secret sexual longings, and hidden resentments.  We watch the characters tell jokes, dance, flirt and argue; the group splinters and reforms.  Although the observations on family politics are not particularly original, nor profound, they are portrayed well in a sustained and impressive piece of ensemble mime (Lenton's Vanishing Point company was awarded the Best Ensemble Critics' Award for Theatre in Scotland in 2009).  Lenton makes reference to Maeterlinck's preoccupation with death in the closing lines of the play where he has his narrator, rather artlessly, list the wheres, whens and hows of each characters' death over the next couple of decades.  It is fairly clear what Lenton is getting at; instead of employing puppets to represent fate's complete control over man, as Maeterlinck did, Lenton instead uses a big-brother style voice over to lay bare the futility of each character's actions.  The final revelation of the characters' future demises completely undercuts their striving for self-determination; the interactions we have witnessed are made to seem fleeting and poignantly human.

However, considering the pedigree of all those involved in the staging of Interiors (a co-production with Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Mercadante Teatro Stabile di Napoli and Traverse Theatre in association with Lyric Hammersmith and Tron Theatre) I failed to find the play compelling in its subject nor innovative in its execution.  The concept of a omniscient voice-over articulating the private thoughts of those assembled around the dinner table is not particularly original, the reference to contemporary Big Brother culture obvious and rather laboured.  It was quite funny; it was a bit like a skit on your average TV sketch show, except it went on for an hour and a half.  By the closing lines of the play, the dead girl's narration descends into such cringeworthy sentimentality that the play's real strength of portraying quotidian family life with accurate and entertaining realism is unfortunately undermined.  One is left with a frustrated sense that the rich potential offered by Maeterlinck's original has  not been successfully exploited, neither thematically nor stylistically; indeed, that the link between Interiors and Intérieur is actually rather tenuous, more a shared stage set than a coherent set of philosophical ideas and questions.

Kafka's Monkey / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

Kafka's Monkey
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord
14th September - 4th October 2010
Monday- Saturday 9pm, Saturday 3.30pm, 50 minutes duration
14-28 euros
In English with French subtitles

**** 

In Colin Teevan's excellent adaptation of Kafka's allegoric short story 'A Report to an Academy', Kathryn Hunter plays an ape who has achieved the ultimate evolutionary feat; to ensure his survival at the hands of cruel human captors, Red Peter has become a human himself. An all-drinking, all-smoking, all-talking, even all-lecturing, assimilated member of human civilisation. Over 50 minutes, Red Peter presents to the academy the story of his life, from his infancy amongst fellow apes on the Golden Coast, through his capture, anthropomorphosis and finally to his squalid, lonely existence as a heavy-drinking variety performer on the very bottom wrung of the social ladder. Following a run at the Young Vic Theatre in London, where it received mixed critical reviews but overall commercial success, Walter Meierjohann’s original english-language production of Kafka's Monkey is shown at the spectacular Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord this month.

In London, Hunter's performance drew heavily on the intimacy provided by the Young Vic's sparse Maria Stage. With an audience of just 150, seated on temporary benches facing bare studio space, the former ape hunted for tics in the hair of those sitting in the front row, offered bananas to his spectators. As in Will Self's satirical novel 'Great Apes', the intimacy and warmth of simian group grooming was emphasised in contrast to the physical isolation of humans, the supposedly advanced civilisation. The grand four-tierd auditorium of the Bouffes du Nord creates quite a different atmosphere and, to the benefit of the drama, Hunter's performance throughout is tempered by the physicality of the more theatrically conventional staging. The former ape's crumpled and besuited body, his posture halfway between that of an ape and a man, seems tiny upon the thrust stage, immersed in the great round sea of audience. The pressure to perform a predefined role for an expectant audience is palpable, almost gladatorial, in the claustrophic arena-like space; the premise of the play may be the presentation of an academic report but the atmosphere is more akin to the circus.

Kathryn Hunter's performance is remarkable, a true joy to watch. Nervous and fidgetty, and with an arsenal of impressively honed monkey mannerisms, Hunter plays Peter as truely pathetic in his desperate endeavour to ingratiate himself, to assimilate, and to find his place in a companion- and peer-less society. Yet Peter is as much a human as he is a monkey, and in Teevan's adaptation we recognise the familiar themes and fears of Kafka's work; persecution, isolaton and loneliness born of the desire for conformity and uniformity, whether it be one's own or society's at large. The ability to "adapt" perfectly, and at will, to one's surroundings is shown to be both a myth and a dangerous desire to harbour; Peter now occupies a lonely no-man's, and no-monkey's, land between two societies that equally repel and reject him.

A truly excellent adaptation of an important and oft-neglected component of Kafka's canon, which provides the material for an equally excellent performance of theatrical versatility from Kathryn Hunter.

This will be the Bouffes' final English-language production this season, although forthcoming operas such as The Magic Flute (from 9 November, directed by the theatre's previous long-running artistic director Peter Brook), The Second Woman (from 26 April) and Gertrude Stein's avant-garde libretto Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights (from 17 May) may also be of interest to audience members who only speak English.