When I heard that Shakespeare’s Globe was going to stage The Taming of the Shrew with Irish actors, it seemed a really good idea. The Irish are very adept at mixing tragedy and farce.
Caroline Byrne has set her production in 1916; but since there is no mention of the Easter Uprising, either verbally or visually, you wonder why she is so specific. The taming would be better a decade earlier in the same period as JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.
The comedy has never been popular with feminists and the politically correct; but it has always been a box-office hit. Much of the play is so brutal that it is not funny at all. Edward MacLiam plays the mad Petruchio (“I am rough and woo not like a babe”) and Aoife Duffin is the headstrong Katharine.
Byrne’s production never gels and it seems, scene by scene, as if the actors are performing in two different plays. At present the brutality and the broad comedy jar equally; it would be so much more coherent to act it all for real.
The story of RMS Titanic, one of the great modern tragedies and a classic case of hubris, has been told many times: in print, notably by Walter Lord’s book A Night to Remember, and on film and in theatre.
Thom Southerland is reviving his brilliant production of the Broadway musical version, Titanic, which he directed at Southwark Playhouse in 2013. Once again he achieves miracles with a large cast, a fine ensemble, on the Charing Cross Theatre’s small stage. The emotional impact is undiminished. The operatic choral opening, superbly sung, gets the performance off to a memorable start. Maury Yeston’s score soars.
The book by Peter Stone emphasises the rigid class divisions and gives a cross-section of society from millionaires to Irish immigrants. Many of the characters are based on actual passengers and crew.
Bruce Ismay, owner of the Titanic, emerges as the villain, insisting the liner should throw caution to the wind and go faster. There is a first-rate dramatic confrontation between him, the captain and the architect when they blame each other for the disaster.
The musical, essentially serious, deeply felt and full of compassion, ends with a dignified tribute to all those who died. ENO should invite Southerland to direct a full-scale production at the Coliseum.
Jesse Eisenberg, best known as an actor and for his performance as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, makes his London stage debut at Trafalgar Studios in The Spoils, a play he has written with a whacking leading role for himself. Eisenberg has made a career out of playing oddballs and here he casts himself as Ben, a rich, lonely, immature, neurotic, drug-numbed Jew whom nobody likes. There is nothing to like. Ben is an arrogant, callous, spiteful bully and a gross liar. He is totally obnoxious and full of self-loathing. Self-destructive, he seeks to destroy others. Scott Elliott directs and Eisenberg and his excellent co-stars are highly entertaining.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is performed by seven actors at Southwark Playhouse, a fruitless exercise and difficult to follow for those who don’t know the play. Purists should give it a
wide berth.
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