Last night I saw War Horse, the stage show at the New London Theatre, which has been adapted from Michael Morpurgo's children's novel of the same name.
It was a brilliant show — and incredibly emotional. The horses, which are life-size hand-spring puppets, look so real, you can actually see them breathing. They paw the ground, they ninny when they are scared, snort when they're excited. And they actually let actors scramble up on top of them to go for a ride!
It's a real ensemble act to bring this lovely war story to life without you sitting there thinking, that's just a bunch of sticks! I was mesmirised throughout — and for two-and-a-bit hours I believed the puppets were real.
If you get a chance to see it, please do. Tickets are available right up until February 2013.
At the risk of turning this blog into one about theatre, can I just say that if you live in London and are looking for something interesting and cultural to do one evening, please consider going along to see Hamlet at the Young Vic, which runs until January 21.
Sadly, tickets are all sold out, but the theatre holds back up to 20 "gallery only" tickets for each performance, which cost just £10 a pop (there's a limit of two per customer). The only catch is that you have to buy the tickets in person on the day you want to attend and you have to be prepared to sit on a stool for three-and-a-half hours. But I can tell you that it's entirely worth it.
I went to see the show on Wednesday evening. This meant queuing up at the Young Vic at 9.30am to purchase my tickets (I cycled 6 miles in the rain to get there, that's what I call dedication) and then returning at 7pm that night to see the performance.
I've not seen Hamlet performed live before, although I have read the play and seen a couple of versions of the film, namely the ones starring Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh. Oh, and I've also been to Helsingor, in Denmark, where the play is set (see photograph of Elsinore Castle, below).
But this was completely different to anything I'd ever expected. For a start, the play is set in a secure psychiatric unit — Hamlet is a young man insane with grief, after all — and when you arrive you are frog-marched through a maze of clinical corridors where inmates scribble notes on clipboards as you file past. You exit via a front desk, which forms the key backdrop of the stage set.
It's very cleverly done and reminded me of a cross between George Orwell's 1984 — it's very clinical and drab and grey — and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The play itself is almost performed in the round — it's quite an intimate experience — and from our cheap seats, oops stools, in the gallery we had the most perfect vantage point to take it all in.
I'm not one for reviewing plays, so I'd like to point you in the direction of this review by John Morrison which sums it up wonderfully. He describes the play as "the most exciting Hamlet production of my life".
I thought it was wonderful. Michael Sheen, who I know better as Tony Blair in The Deal and David Frost in Frost/Nixon, was mesmerising in the title role. But the rest of the cast is excellent, too, and I especially liked that Rosencrantz was played by a woman (with an Irish accent) and that Claudius looked — and sounded — like a psychiatric consultant in his three-piece suit and slicked back hair.
The ending was especially dramatic — I'd forgotten how many people die in this play (and I thought Juno and the Paycock was depressing!) But there's an unexpected visual illusion — I believe Derren Brown was a consultant on the show — that provides just the right level of awe to end the production on a wow-I-didn't-know-that-was-going-to-happen kind of high. Brilliant stuff.
I'm not much of a theatre goer, but this year I've seen a couple of Irish productions — The Playboy of the Western World, here in London, and Ross O'Carroll Kelly's Between Foxrock and a Hard Place, at The Gaiety in Dublin — and enjoyed both of them greatly.
And having seen members of Ireland's Abbey Theatre perform, both at DublinSwell2011 and The Music of Ghostlight: An evening with Joseph O'Connor and Friends — at the Abbey Theatre itself — I was really keen to see a fully fledged Abbey Theatre production. So, when I discovered by chance that the Abbey was coming to London to do a joint production of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock (first performed in 1924) with the National Theatre — at the National Theatre — I made plans to go.
I was lucky enough to secure great seats for just £12 as part of the NT's Travelex £12 season and on Tuesday night I braved the wintry cold and went to see the show at the Lyttelton Theatre.
Powerful, is the first word that comes to mind. Depressing, is the second. And, if I'm pushed, I might say funny as the third.
A tragedy in three acts
The tragic-comic storyline, in case you don't know it, goes something like this.
Juno and her retired merchant seaman husband Captain Boyle (also known a "the paycock" of the title) live in a rundown two-roomed Georgian tenement in Dublin during the 1920s. Their son, Johnny, lost his arm during the Easter uprising, and their daughter, Mary, is on strike. When the Captain is informed he is the beneficiary of his cousin's will, he is delighted to be raised out of poverty — they refurnish the tenement and invest in a gramophone using funds borrowed from friends and neighbours with a promise to repay them when the inheritance comes through.
* Beware: spoiler alert *
Of course, the money never arrives and all the goods must be returned. But things take a turn for the worse when Mary becomes pregnant out of wedlock and Johnny is kidnapped and murdered by the IRA.
* End of spoiler *
The play is divided into three parts and is set entirely in the living quarters of the tenement, with its decrepit grey walls, high ceiling and minimal furniture. Time shifts are noted by the sound of rain outside and the amount of pale watery light filtering through the big Georgian windows.
First-class acting
The acting, of course, is first-class and the central characters are terrific. I loved Ciaran Hinds as the Captain, Sinead Cusack is outstanding as Juno and Clare Dunne does a nice, if sometimes overwrought, turn as Mary. But it was the lesser role of Johnny — poor miserable terrified Johnny scared of reprisal — played by Ronan Raftery that made my heart lurch. He spends most of the time on stage in a state of despair — his fear, his pain and his dismay are palpable — but he's always sitting off to the side, or cowering in a corner, and yet it was hard to take your eyes off him.
I hadn't expected the play to be so, well, emotional.
The first two acts, before intermission, were quite hilarious in places — amazing how people pretending they're drunk and philosophising about the world can be so funny — but the third act suddenly became very dark and dramatic. I hesitate to say the word "operatic" because it wasn't, but it could have so easily tipped over into farce if the actors hadn't reigned it back ever so slightly.
I couldn't help but be moved by Sinead Cusack breaking down on stage, sobbing and wringing her hands in a fit of grief, and yet there was part of me thinking, my god, those are real tears. (I think this is always the problem I have with theatre: I never lose myself in the production and am constantly aware that I am watching actors performing roles in front of me.)
When the final curtain came down I was left feeling ever so slightly distraught. It's not exactly an uplifting play, but then it's not supposed to be. This is about the tragedy of war on families and the ways in which women hold the home together. But it might also be seen as an allegory of Ireland's political history — when the family had financial independence they were happy and free but when they lost it they were downtrodden and miserable. On the other hand, with the current economic situation in Ireland, it might be read the other way: living on credit catches up with you in the end.
As Captain Boyle keeps saying throughout the play, "Th' whole worl's in a terrible state o' chassis".
Don't miss out!
If you live in London it's definitely worth seeing if you get the chance. The £12 tickets in the stalls are worth it — although do note the seats don't have armrests, are slightly smaller than usual and if someone tall sits in front of you your view might be obscured — although I don't know whether any are still available. There's plenty of full price tickets though. The show runs until the end of February.
Finally, here's a clip about Juno and the Paycock, the first ever co-production between Ireland and England's national theatres.
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Reading Matters features hundreds of book reviews of mainly modern and contemporary literary fiction, with a special focus on novels from Australia and Ireland, and occasional forays into crime, true crime, translated fiction, narrative non-fiction and memoirs.
Your host is Kim Forrester, otherwise known as kimbofo, who has been blogging about books since 2001.
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