The Bard? It’s more like an episode of Casualty!
STRATFORD’S Royal Shakespeare Company is preparing itself for next week’s official opening of Sir Antony Sher’s Lear.
That excitement may explain the distinctly 2nd XI feel to a production at the RSC’s adjacent Swan Theatre this week.
The Two Noble Kinsmen was probably written in 1614, two years before Shakespeare’s death. The play is attributed to both Shakespeare and John Fletcher and the co-authorship may explain an uneven quality in the writing.
Some scenes feel like off-cuts or reworkings from other plays — most notably a sub-plot involving a gaoler’s daughter who is driven mad by unrequited love for a young nobleman. She is very much Ophelia Mark II — there is even Hamlet-style talk of ‘doing it behind the arras’.
Blanche McIntyre’s production of this rarely-performed nonmasterpiece has its moments. The two title characters, cousins Arcite and Palamon, are brought to life splendidly by Jamie Wilkes and James Corrigan. Both actors honour the Stratford tradition. The gaoler’s daughter is played touchingly by Danusia Samal.
But, oh dear, a few other members of the cast are really not up to what one used to consider RSC standard. Words are mumbled. One closing exposition would barely rate a pass at drama school, it is so indistinct, and the accents are a self-indulgent mess, though director McIntyre must take the blame for that.
Some of the off-the-ball facial gestures are laughably amateur, ranging from the melodramatic (twitching jaw muscles, not least from Gyuri Sarossy’s Theseus), to wandering-eye disengagement (one or two of the minor gods who infest the semi-Olympian plot). The delivery includes needless shouting and over-strained earnestness, accompanied by the occasional hand-to-heart move which may either be a Star Trekstyle salute or a sign intended to convey solidarity.
The gaoler himself (Paul McEwan) could be a minor figure in TV’s Casualty, he is so underwhelming. Hippolyta (Allison McKenzie) is a self-regarding Scotswoman but her sister Emilia, is turned into an eeh-bah-gum Northerner by Frances McNamee.
From the opening scene, in which two characters enter via ropes from on high like SAS soldiers at an embassy siege, the direction is prey to stunts and startling noises.
Add some pointless gender changing and some not particularly tuneful singing and you are left wondering if quality has surrendered to political correctness at the RSC’s casting department.