New Seed from Old Corn: Review of Cymbeline (directed by Emma Rice for Kneehigh Theatre) at the Swan, September 2006
2007; Routledge; Volume: 3; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17450910701460999
ISSN1745-0926
Autores Tópico(s)Literature: history, themes, analysis
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Michael Vale's set is made for touring, but works extremely well within the organic wooden architecture of the Swan. The stage's thrust is used very effectively, as are its auditorium and galleries. The show is largely made up from smaller, portable scenic items (a boat worn on braces, braziers, mattresses and so on). Its only substantial item is an upstage metal cage that occupies the theatre from stage floor to just beneath the Swan's highest upstage gallery. This scaffold structure is used for numerous entrances and exits and also several ensemble scenes—providing an enclosed space that delineates internal settings as well as a musicians’ gallery and stairs to stage level; its two large front doors open outward towards the audience; within one of these there is a smaller door that can be used when the main cage is locked closed. 2. It is absolutely marvellous to see such an intelligent and skilful director as Rice taking the stage as part of her acting ensemble. In such an environment, greater risk-taking is made possible by the very fact that the company's artistic director (and the adaptor and director of this show) is not asking her actors to do anything that she is not prepared herself to do. 3. In its first ten minutes, the performance has offered a theatrical dumb-show, transvestite performance as well as iconographic representations of the language and themes of the text. All of these are distinctly early modern in their tenor. 4. Whilst we seem capable of condoning frequent and open textual intercourse with our beloved bard on the part of scholars, who often present Shakespeare's work in radically transfigured and illuminating ways (such as the regular philological epistles of the Church of St Stephen and His Acolytes, which present Shakespeare as explorations of French hermaphrodism, Native American epidemics and Jesuit exorcisms …), it seems that for many, this kind of liberal and imaginative interpretative activity has no place whatsoever in the theatre. The fact is amply evidenced by the review with which I conclude this article (of which there were many more in like tone). Shakespeare in performance, it would seem, should consist of the performance of unadulterated poetical text, moving from page to stage with as little mediation as possible. In contrast to this opinion, it is my belief that such a conservative attitude to the performance of Shakespeare will not get us very far—and that makers of theatre need to be at least as bold and inventive as literary scholars in their presentation, juxtaposition and contextualization of England's national theatre poet. 5. The production toured to a variety of conventional and found theatre spaces: Rufford Abbey, Nottinghamshire; Restormel Castle, Cornwall; Northern Stage, Newcastle; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds; Bristol Old Vic; Hall for Cornwall; Lyric Hammersmith, London; and Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Its audience demographic was equally diverse. 6. This and other elements of rough theatre were evocative of Bill Bryden's staging techniques for The Mysteries at the National Theatre in the 1980s. 7. Once again, the moment is playfully theatrical. Lučkay toys with the convention of the male stripper, who sometimes throws elements of his costume to audiences as a trophy (or proof of attendance at such transgressive performances). For a touring theatre company, however, to whom Iachimo's costume is worth much more in monetary terms than a simple thong, this telos must be denied. 8. What makes this scene most disturbing is the fact that the dance of seduction is undertaken whilst Imogen is asleep, the fact that she is lifted, manipulated, observed beneath her undergarments and then robbed while she is still sleeping plays uncomfortably against current problems pertaining to date-rape. The problem is further picked up on when Kneehigh decides to use Rohypnol to drug Imogen. 9. The moment is yet another re-working of the bird imagery that permeates Shakespeare's play and is evidence of the sophistication of Kneehigh's adaptation. Doves, Cockerels and Ravens adorn the set as scenographic elements and a significant amount of narration is undertaken by the transvestite Cornish woman, Mrs Puttock. 10. The movement of the car seemed to me to be a playfully mocking reference to the blocking of the messenger in Berkoff's Coriolanus. 11. The production modernizes the notion of dispossession that is evident in Shakespeare's play. Here, however, it is not courtiers and princes who are evoked in a gentle re-working of Shakespeare's rustication and return pastoralism, but the familiar bodies of modern down-and-outs, not temporarily, but permanently dispossessed by our own society. 12. The trumpet work is very much in the style of Miles Davis's On the Corner and Bitches’ Brew period. 13. The appearance of Jupiter bears comparison with the entrance of the angel in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. It has the same sense of shock and astonishing beauty. It accordingly demonstrates significant theatrical acumen. 14. The production's greatest strengths are its treatment of memory and lost childhood. The childhood theme is particularly strong. Even the images provided above company biographies in the programme are photographs of Kneehigh as children, on beaches, at dinosaur parks, in toy cars, from the age of three or so …
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