EASTWARD HO! Jonson, Chapman, Marston, RSC, Swan till 14 September. Newcastle

EASTWARD HO!: Jonson, Chapman, Marston
Swan, Stratford Upon Avon, Tkts 0870 609 110
Runs: 2h 45m, one interval, till 14 September
then Newcastle-upon-Tyne Playhouse in rep 30 September-10 October
Tkts: (Newcastle) 0870 905 5060
Review: Rod Dungate, 25 April 2002

Great rarity, great play, great humour, great acting, don't miss it, marred only by too many directorial jokes and flourishes.It has long been a mystery to me why this play has remained gathering dust on shelves for so long. This long, long overdue revival at the RSC puts right a wrong and makes a cracking opening to what promises to be an intriguing and revealing season of little-known plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Written by three master writers from the period, all with classical backgrounds, this joyously ramshackle play still wallops along like a circus comic car, honking, sparking and farting to the great delight of all. It is hard not to see Jonson, Chapman and Marston, guffawing over a pint or two (or more) as they egg each other on to ever greater outrageousness. Like calling a servant of some two or three lines Hamlet (Avin Shah gives it everything he's got), simply to put into the mouth of another character the immortal line: 'Sfoot, Hamlet; are you mad?' (and it still gets a laugh I assure you.)

The play itself is an everyday tale of London folk. Touchstone, a London goldsmith, has two apprentices one, Quicksilver, bad and one, Golding, good. He has two daughters, one, Gertrude, with eyes on becoming a Lady, the other, Mildred, honest and serious living. Gertrude gets to marry Sir Petronel Flash, a cad of a knight only after her land, by which he raises money from Security, a money lender, who's wife, Winifred, he, Sir Petronel, fancies. Still with it? Well, it all gets terribly complicated after that and a lot of people get tipped into the Thames before the good apprentice becomes Lord Mayor (or the like) and helps everyone become good or even better.

Extraordinarily, the three playwrights manage to work in the styles of several play types at once, satirising City and its citizens and the sentimental endings of prodigal son morality stories, while at the same time enabling us to enjoy that very sentiment. But even more importantly noone could be writing better for actors (albeit at the time, young actors 'boys'). These are roles actors can enjoy, invent within, expand and strut about in. And fill them out these actors do, with glorious and hilarious effect.

It is a pity then that Lucy Pitman-Wallace, who directs, and who for the most part has skilfully directed the play in a full-bodied production, doesn't trust her material enough. She adds a distracting string of flourishes and silly jokes that simply slow the pace down or, even worse, smash through the world the actors work so hard to create. A joke about an apprentice's contract being a P45 would be pathetic even at an under-graduate level and Mick Sands's score is allowed to work destructively against the play's forward thrust. Hopefully Pitman-Wallace will get her line-up at the end sorted out too, not a single one of the principal actors was clearly visible to most of the audience. What are some of these directors doing, one wonders.

That said, it's the acting that makes this production a must: so much of it, it's hard to know where to start. From Wayne Cater's Drawer (clearly a fan of Jacobean Hammer Horrors) to Claire Benedict's Mistress Touchstone. Amanda Drew's social climbing Gertrude is a comic gem, with her studied lightness and well practised Ws instead of Rs and a charming inability to see herself for what she is. Who could dislike her, eh? But commanding the landscape is Geoffrey Freshwater's Touchstone. Freshwater has a great range as RSC regulars will know. Here he is at his comic best, his larger than life character winging its way into the auditorium, his language as real and unaffected as if written yesterday and a wicked twinkle in his eyes that lets you know Freshwater is laughing just as much as he is making us.

William Touchstone: Geoffrey Freshwater
Mistress Touchstone: Claire Benedict
Gertrude: Amanda Drew
Mildred: Shelley Conn
Golding: James Tucker
Quicksilver: Billy Carter
Sindefy: Sasha Behar
Sir Petronel Flash: Michael Matus
His Page: Avin Shah
Security: Paul Bentall
Winifred: Sian Howard
Bramble: Colin McCormack
Seagull: David Acton
Scapethrift: Vincent Brimble
Spendall: Keith Osborn
Slitgut: Avin Shah
Wolf: Joshua Richards
Holdfast: Keith Osborn
Poldavy: Joshua Richards
Coachman: Joshua Richards
Hamlet: Avin Shah
Potkin: Vincent Brimble
Mistress Fond: David Acton
Mistress Gazer: Keith Osborn
Scrivener: Wayne Cater
Drawer: Wayne Cater
Gentlemen: Vincent Brimble/ Sean Hannaway
Constable: Sean Hannaway

Director: Lucy Pitman-Wallace
Design: Robert Jones
Lighting: Wayne Dowdeswell
Music: Mick Sands
Sound: Martin Slavin

2002-04-25 22:28:54