THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY. To 28 June.
Manchester.
THE REVENGER’S TRAGEDY
Royal Exchange Theatre To 28 June 2008.
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat5 Wed 2.30pm & Sat 4pm.
BSL Signed 14 June 4pm.
Post-show Discussion 12 June.
Runs 2hr 40min One interval.
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833.
www.royalexchange.co.uk/bookonline
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 June.
Better to look at than listen to.
It must have been grim in Jacobean London. On every corner a trickster or schemer and in dark alleys and great houses alike the kind of villain whose existence had to be transposed to the poisonous world of Catholic Italy for the stage. Playwrights repeatedly attested to these cynical and sordid times, while it’s no wonder “sweet Mr Shakespeare” retired to a large home in the town of his Elizabethan childhood.
No-one depicted the new world more vividly, in tragedy and comedy alike, than Thomas Middleton. So, scholarly research that transfers this play to him from supposed author Cyril Tourneur, will find no quarrel with theatrical experience of its wild invention and psychological acuity.
For Vindice (Middleton doesn’t hold back on character-revealing names) fighting ducal corruption has a deeply personal motive. The lecherous Duke caused the death of Vindice’s lover Gloriana. Jonathan Moore’s Exchange production emphasises the death in its opening funeral ceremony, from which Vindice erupts into the courtly cesspit of fantasticated rottenness and rivalry.
As in many tragedies of the time, revenge is finally executed during a masked performance, the noble audience meeting their ends as they’re sitting relaxed to be entertained – a far cry from the court-audience superiority of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’.
Here the victims sit, rather improbably, in a square facing outwards as revenge dances around them. But it provides a strong image of them as over-secure sitting ducks, an idea repeated in many crime films.
Yet the clearest steal from cinema, a murderous foray set to the sweetness of The Sound of Music’s ‘My Favourite Things’, is a far-inferior echo of the upbeat ‘Singing’ in the Rain’ accompanying the assault and rape in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
Besides,The Revenger’s Tragedy isn’t a film and its acid drops, to the very end, through verse as well as visual images like the famous poisoned skull. Tthe verse-speaking here is variable. Stephen Tompkinson catches Vindice’s hefty resolve and unhappiness, but throughout the cast few rise to the precision and intensity needed much of the time. The alternately vivid and lurid theatricality is a poor substitute for this.
Duke/Noble: Robert Demeger.
Lussurioso: Jonathan Keeble.
Surio: Stephen Hudson.
Ambitioso/Pall Berarer/Lab Assistant: Merryn Owen.
Supervacuo/Pall Bearer/Dondolo: Sam Fletcher.
Junior/Pall Bearer/ Spurio’s Servant/Noble: Mikey North.
Antonio/Pall Bearer/Judge/Officer: John Gillett.
Piero/Priest/Guard/Noble with Plastic Face: Marc Parry.
Vindice: Stephen Tompkinson.
Hippolito: Damian O’Hare.
Sordido/Pathology Lab Assistant/Keeper: Drew Horner.
Duchess: Corinna Powlesland.
Gratiana/Party Guest/Conspirator/Masked Avenger: Eileen O’Brien.
Castiza/Gloriana/Party Guest/Spurio’s Servant/Lady: Stephanie Brittain.
Director: Jonathan Moore.
Designer: David Blight.
Lighting: Vince Herbert.
Sound: Steve Brown.
Dance: Mark Bruce.
Fights: Renny Krupinski.
2008-06-14 01:54:00