SWEET WILLIAM. To 11 June.
Scarborough
SWEET WILLIAM
by Alan Plater
Northern Broadsides Tour to 11 June 2005
Runs 1hr 55min One interval
Final performances: Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough
Wed 8, Fri 10 June at 7.30pm Sat 11 June 2.30pm
TICKETS: 01723 370541
www.sjt.uk.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 June at New Theatre Royal Portsmouth
Clog-dancing and conversation make up for initial apparent inconsequence.Alan Plater's the playwright for witty, hilarious dialogue. Perceptions, and ultimately the overall point, arrive from the sides when we're not looking.
Not a lot seems to happen in his new play. Some lower-class Elizabethan London pub regulars wait around for a playwright friend clearly Shakespeare to arrive, having multiple bones to pick with him. Balladeer Simon, whose songs always turn out as Greensleeves, complains William's latest lyric has too many syllables. Cumbrian wrestler Mac never goes to the theatre but has heard Will's done a play where a professional wrestler gets beaten by an amateur.
Today, though, the theatre's given Henry V, for fat Jack saw it and recognised himself in Falstaff, who's killed off. That'd place the action in 1599, and despite it being mainly sitting around talking, there's more than the century about to change. The locals are about to have their local renamed over their heads, and lose Will to the upper-crust
For when he arrives (just in time for the interval) it's with a couple of the gentry, who hardly fit the world of Nell's hostelry. This leads to the one moment Plater takes his Shakespeare from being poet of the present to less convincing prophecy mode, envisioning a time when plays can be entirely about ordinary people.
Meanwhile, Will has to explain as so many writers still do why a character having some notable resemblances to someone in real life, isn't a straight reproduction of that person (a lot of people still make the mistake and take offence). Aware Sweet William would tour with The Comedy of Errors, Plater put in a comic pair of twin bellows-menders, conjoined in sentences if not bodies. These 2 actors play the Antipholus twins in Comedy. In a more oblique parallel the actors of Comedy's other twins are here Shakespeare, who takes life to transmute it to the stage, and the thief who takes purses among the audience.
Along with Australian David Allen's Cheapside this is the best play I know about Shakespeare. Comic and entertaining, both throw intriguing light on the stage's greatest illuminator of human beings.
Jack, a sportsman: Barrie Rutter
Nell, an innkeeper: Sarah Parks
Simon, a balladeer: Max Rubin
Peter, a painter: Richard Standing
Jane, a clown: Claire Storey
Mac, a wrestler: Andrew Vincent
Matthew, a bellows-mender: Andrew Cryer
Mark, a bellows-mender: Conor Ryan
Bella, a barmaid: Ruth Alexander-Rubin
Nicholas, a thief: Simon Holland-Roberts
Will, a poet: Conrad Nelson
Kate, a lady: Zoe Lambert
Thomas, a gentleman: Guy Parry
Ralph, a constable: Gary Skelton
Director: Barrie Rutter
Designers: Giuseppe Belli, Emma Barrington-Binns
Lighting: Antony Wilcock
Composer: Conrad Nelson
2005-06-06 00:04:18