Bold swansong from a key theatre figure
Theatre The Captive Queen Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Globe
★★★★★
In 1992, actor Barrie Rutter formed Northern Broadsides with a mission to produce Shakespeare and others within a resolutely flat-vowelled, non-velvet framework. At the time, this move away from the confines of RP was seen as an act of chutzpah and in 2018, as fewer working-class actors feel able to enter the profession, Rutter’s work feels as important as ever.
But now he’s stepping down, citing a lack of support from Arts Council England, which told him that his quarter-century of (often) site-specific productions was irrelevant. If this patchily executed swansong, The
Captive Queen (which he stars in and directs), doesn’t quite capture the importance of what Rutter has done for British theatre, it is still a reminder of what we will miss in this outspoken, sometimes divisive figure.
In a typically bloody-minded move, Rutter has chosen the “rhymed heroic” play (original title Aureng-zebe, or “The Great Mogul”) of John Dryden, a writer rarely discussed nowadays and even more seldom performed. Part of the problem is that Dryden’s work is often bound up in the politics of late-17th-century England, a misty world of Whigs and Tories that rarely makes its way onto school syllabuses.
Aureng-zebe is set in Agra during the days of the Mughal Empire. It deals with two brothers’ battle for power as their ageing Emperor father (played by Rutter himself) sits in his dotage as the outside world collapses. The title character Indamora, a symbol of the uneasy political situation, tries as best she can to extract herself from the human folly that surrounds her.
Naturally, Rutter has relocated the action. The Captive Queen takes place in a decaying dye factory at some point in the late-20th century. There’s a tea urn on a rackety metal trolley, characters clock in and clock out dressed in utilitarian boiler suits adorned with gorgeous, vivid fabrics. As an aesthetic decision it works, even if Rutter doesn’t quite make the most of the Playhouse’s unusual space.
The fact that the play is performed in heroic couplets gives an urgency, and the cast rattle through it with an admirable accessibility (to be fair, Dryden’s language is much easier to decipher than you might think). Occasionally, the pace stymies the dramatic power, although Naeem Hayat as Aurangzeb manages to extract emotional articulacy from his lines.
The other discovery of the evening is TV actress Angela Griffin, who is terrific fun as Nourmahal, wife to the Emperor. With a voice as ripe as a three-week-old slab of Wensleydale, Griffin takes us from suspicious scold (“I’ll haunt your nights/disable your delights”) to lascivious stepmother to tragic victim with an agility, clamouring loudly in fine contrast to Hayat’s smaller but equally assured performance.
There’s always been a touch of the Donald Wolfits about Rutter, a strong-voiced actor-manager, and his turn as the Emperor isn’t among his best (that was probably his performance as a patriarchal glassworks owner in the splendid 2013 revival of Githa Sowerby’s early 20th-century masterpiece Rutherford and Son). But he’s an important part of British theatre, and this boldly conceived production proves that Arts Council England really should have treated him better.
Until March 4. Tickets: 020 7401 9919; shakespearesglobe.com