A NEW WORLD To 9 October.
London.
A NEW WORLD
by Trevor Griffiths.
Shakespeare’s Globe in rep to 9 October 2009.
2pm 19 Sept, 3 Oct.
7.30pm 18, 26 Sept, 2, 9 Oct.
Runs 3hr One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7401 9919.
www.shakespeares-globe.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 September.
Invigorating new play about an uncommon common man.
Among the other triumphs of his regime at Shakespeare’s Globe Dominic Dromgoole (Artistic Director and director of Trevor Griffiths’ play) can count reviving awareness of leading 1970s dramatists. Following Howard Brenton’s 2006 In Extremis comes Griffiths, whose The Party provided Laurence Olivier with his last major role, for the National Theatre and whose Comedians - being revived in Hammersmith – was a major career-step in Nottingham and London for the young Jonathan Pryce.
Griffiths’ chronicle of Thomas Paine, the Norfolk-born stay-maker who suddenly, in middle-age, became a major pamphleteer supporting the American and French Revolutions, has been around as a screenplay for some years (this production’s “in association with Richard Attenborough”). Fitting the Globe’s recent interest in new plays on those revolutions, it responds to the epic open space by following Paine’s public journey.
While there are extracts from his work – less the ‘big three’ of Common Sense, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason than the later Agrarian Justice - and though the play shows his death (in 1809) Paine’s participation in the Revolutions are the main action. Thought-processes are left for another work in another space; here, an abiding image is John Light’s finely-acted Paine walking determinedly through audience or across stage, sometimes while teaching a young Black lad to read (Griffiths emphasises his subject’s attempts to include abolition of slavery in the American Constitution).
There’s often a quizzical look on his face, sometimes forming into determination. Love-life is minimally displayed (it rarely convinces in political plays), but shows the forward-thinking Paine’s blind-spot – he’s amazed his American lover’s annoyed on finding out he’s married.
Dromgoole’s production boldly reinvents the theatre’s Shakespearean-age excitement by extending and building over the stage, and using the ground in front for some startling images – a slave-auction, a hanged boy. Griffiths’ more didactic moments are helped by the ever more-than-reliable Keith Bartlett as Benjamin Franklin, his life extended to enable a through-narration. Both revolutions, it’s clearly shown, had their compromises and led to reaction. But Paine ploughed on, a determined figure whose moral and political vision has been vindicated repeatedly over two centuries.
Will: Daniel Anthony.
Franklin: Keith Bartlett.
Peter/Gottschalk/Buck/Short: Michael Benz.
Aitken/Dickenson/Bell/Burke: Philip Bird.
Ma Downey/Young Swedish Woman: Sophie Duval.
Barker/Robert Morris/Returning Officer: Peter Gale.
Sam Adams/Danton: James Garnon.
Cannon/Rev Smith/John Jay/Cloots/Robespierre: Gregory Gudgeon.
Rittenhouse/Silas Deane/Lafayette: Brendan Hughes.
Joseph/Gouverneur Morris: Sean Kearns.
Anderson/Revere/Monroe/De Bonneville: Jack Laskey.
Thomas Paine: John Light.
Matlack/Jefferson/Marat: Jamie Parker.
Lotte/Jefferson’s Ggranddaughter: Julia Reinstein.
Carnet: Alix Riemer.
Marthe: Laura Rogers.
Washington: Dominic Rowan.
Guard/Barère /Mourner: Ewart James Walters.
Philly/Mrs Monroe: Jade Williams.
Citizens: Michael E Curran, Martin Doyle, Reeda Harris, Daniel Langley, Hambi Pappas, D’Adrian Tomlin.
Director: Dominic Dromgoole.
Designer: Tim Shortall.
Composer: Stephen Warbeck.
Musical Director: Martin Bousie.
Choreographer: Sian Williams.
Voice/Dialect: Jan Haydn Rowles.
Movement: Glynn MacDonald.
Fight director: Philip D’Orleans.
Assistant director/movement: Lootie Johansen-Bibby.
2009-09-14 01:39:35