CANTERBURY TALES: till 10 July
London
THE CANTERBURY TALES
by Geoffrey Chaucer adapted by Gareth Machin and Ian Hastings
Southwark Playhouse promenade performance To 10 July 2005
Mon-Thu; Sat-Sun 7.15pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7620 3494
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 July
Stories if little of the language from Chaucer focus on having a good time en route round Southwark.
This is no more the whole of Chaucer's range than the trip round Southwark's spaces is the entire trip to Canterbury on which his Tales's 14th-century pilgrims told their varied stories. The accent's on humour, the courtly knight's tale being much reduced (I've missed out 3 battles, Michael Roberts' knight merrily tells us) and given visual comedy with visions of Venus and Mars, plus a comic joust.
It's played in a secret garden, first main location after we've met the pilgrims in the galleried surrounds of Borough High Street's George Inn (Southwark Playhouse itself is off the map for this walkabout).
Later, a children's playground accommodates, either side the interval, the bawdy Miller's Tale and the moral comedy of the Nun's Priest with his farmyard adventure against pride, the tale of Chanticleer and Peretelote. The Miller (an earthily earnest Shaun Hennessy) adapts least well to the stage. With a fit-up set it's hard to match his bawdy descriptions and anatomical fundamentals; despite an attempt to give some zing to events using children's slides the final farcical events (this tale puts the arse' in farce') are anticlimactic.
The Nun's Priest comes off better, partly because Paul Rumbelow's tall, slim figure is played as a prig, initially opposed to the whole storytelling idea, and needing persuasion to join in. It's a colourful, costumed scene, audience members recruited as Chanticleer's entourage (red beaks supplied). And it's enhanced by Roberts' superb fox, a browned-out landed-gentry sort prancing dandy-like round Chanticleer's fenced-off sanctuary.
Borough Market's arches provide a suitable setting for the grisly morality of Daniel Crowder's suave, camp Pardoner to chill the marrow as prelude to offering his pardons from hellfire, while Heather Williams' bluffly assertive Wife of Bath ends the evening with her feminist fable in the courtyard of Southwark Cathedral.
Here, aided by the use of artificial lighting, the adventure takes on an unexpected poetic beauty. With Dodger Phillips' bluff innkeeper and Joanne Redman's prim-surfaced Prioress, plus a local cast decorating the pilgrim-audience's way between stories and filling out several of the scenes, it's a happy evening, drawing on Chaucer's lighter side.
The Pardoner: Daniel Crowder
The Miller: Shaun Hennessy
Harry Bailey: Dodger Phillips
The Prioress: Joanne Redman
The Knight: Michael Roberts
The Nun's Priest: Paul Rumbelow
The Wife of Bath: Heather Williams
Community Cast: Amor Alcarez, Winston Bennett, Barry Clarke, Matt Cook, John Couzens, Jeffrey Doorn, Karen Gibbons, Nicola Hart, Mpande Kapotwe, Monica Kendall, Jim Kim-Inoue, Bona-Rise Kunimyelo, Euphemia Njuku, Steve Rodgers, Malcolm Tremain, Natasha Vaughan
Director: Gareth Machin
Designer: Laura McEwen
Lighting: Gwendolen Scolding
Sound: Jason Barnes
Composer/Musical Director: Russell Hepplewhite
Choreographer: Joanne Redman
Fight director: Jonathan Waller
Sound associate: Claire Broomhead
Assistant directors: Ellen Hughes, Gemma Kerr, Alisa Needham
2005-07-06 15:23:51