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A passage of death-mark'd love
Romeo and Juliet Stafford Gatehouse **** Icarus Theatre
Collective, founded in 2003-4, aspires, like its namesake, to fly close
to the sun. It has youth on its side. It has massive touring stamina. It
has programming flair. Romeo and Juliet,
seen most recently in the Midlands at Stafford, and due next week (16-17
April) at Leicester's De Montfort Hall – seek it out, you won't be
disappointed - is by no means Icarus's first Shakespeare play. Lewendel's revived or revitalised Othello
– his Macbeth and (Greek chorus-manner staging of) Hamlet
both won accolades and high-starred ratings - tours this autumn to
Northern Ireland and Scotland, and can be seen with Hedda Gabler
in the Midlands at the Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury next February and the
Stafford Gatehouse next March.
But does this energetic young mid-scale
cooperative, which takes risks in exploring ‘the harsh, brutal side of
classical and modern drama', embraces the ‘post modern, surreal and
theatre of the absurd' and sets out to explore the visceral,
unspeakable, kinetic and dynamic, have the raw acting talent to go with
it?
The answer, judging by its current twin touring
productions of R&J and Spring Awakening (reviewed
HERE, and by lauded previous offerings, including
Journey's End, Vincent in Brixton, Albert's Boy,
and a landmark piece Rip Her to Shreds, about a gay teenager in
1980s Northern Ireland), is an unequivocal ‘Yes'. In both the present Angst-ridden shows
(their themed similarities mesh well, like the current ‘Free Spirits'
opera tour – Berg, Janáček etc. - by David
Pountney's WNO), Icarus's actors capture to near-perfection the
poignant, risqué, fiery, vitriolic, painful and essentially doomed
nature of the plot material (‘Tales of mutilation, rape and incest are
not anathema to us'); while the company's founder and inspiration Max
Lewendel, who directs both, displays insight, conceptual coherence and
an uncompromising, challenging approach that together produce, almost
invariably, electrifying results.
The casts may change, but not the quality.
Significant in this Romeo and Juliet were the wonderful raw
urgency, touching naiveté and almost Tybalt-like combativeness of
Kaiden Dubois's Romeo, and the sheer poetic beauty of Nicole Anderson's
Juliet.
Believably a young teen, Anderson epitomises,
more than some Juliets, the sheer antithesis of this maiden and the
bloody, uncultivated, boorish male-dominated society. Is she allowed
books? Maybe not. She learns life through her own intuition-filled
exploration. But what she also brings home are the astounding, endless
subtleties by which Shakespeare distinguishes between the
dictions of his two equal-passioned lovers.
The fights (Ronin Traynor) are all terrific,
finely judged for the space: we get one right at the start, along with
the quipping about maidenhead that flippantly but ominously anticipate
the central romance. Zachary Holton (a naturally cast But there was a jinx on this show – at Periam is an actress exuding authority, breadth,
depth. She could play Lear's Fool, and I daresay Titus Andronicus (not
just Tamara) too. Mercutio's Queen Mab speech simply soared to the
rafters; his death, below Romeo's arm, was searing (though to toy I
think - with dubbing her ‘Mercutia' was a disaster: a female Mercutio
would require far more subtle preparation and redefinition). Likewise, McLaughlin being absent, Holton was
forced - though less persuasively – to take over as an Irish burr Friar
Laurence, urging the cherished lad to Mantua (‘not body's death, but
body's banishment'), and bearing more than a slight resemblance to the
Bishop of London. Reading the role that night, he was really quite
skilful in concealing the fact, or preventing it obtruding. Visually Kayden Dubois's not-headed youngster is
winning. His gestures are inventive; he can raise or lower tension at
will. Romeo's scenes with the Nurse were a triumph. And he delivered
countless magical lines. ‘Peace, Mercutio, peace: thou talk'st of
nothing'; ‘Every cat and dog And little mouse, every unworthy thing /
Live here in heaven and may look on her; But Romeo may not…' But he also
whined somewhat early on: a kindly hand and extra voice coaching would
surely render even better Dubois' promising, involving, heightened
delivery.
Or let be….for by later stages, ultimately the
beautifully wry parting speech ‘How oft when men are at the point of
death….Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide' any criticism had
been utterly allayed. Adam Purnell's set, a kind of forlorn palazzo-cum-ruin
(the Wedekind set reversed, I gather) atop which Juliet awaits her all
too momentary lover, works wonderfully, though is underused. Tybalt can
lurk there, or a patient Benvolio (Christopher Smart), and a jutting
platform before it helps raise much of the action; but the
benign-or-daunting-or-both château needed, one felt, more
specific, active use.
Kate Unwin's costumes were more mixed: Romeo
(though in curiously sexless hose), Juliet and Benvolio seemed fine, and
Lady Capulet's reds added stature; but Capulet's tunic and prodding
knees looked curious. The nurse's, though it mattered little, needed
more variety and changes.
Holton's lighting design (with Dan Saggars) was
terrific, especially in its laser-like white light pointing of the final
tomb scene, so brilliantly anticipated by Lewendel at the outset: like
introducing a reaper Death at the outset. Christopher Smart's Benvolio (wonderfully
adapting ‘Here comes Romeo..oh..oh..' as a kind of alack-a-day) is in
some ways as good a foil to Romeo as his Moritz is to Melchior in
Spring Awakening. Smart seems always intelligent, inventive. In some
ways, he does the ‘other' emotions for all of them, for rarely does he
deliver a line without some inventive, and always relevant, vocal or
gestural envoi.
No mere silent tree either: ‘Madam, an hour
before the worshipp'd sun Peer'd forth the golden
window of the east, A troubled mind drave me to
walk abroad; Where, underneath the grove of
sycamore That westward rooteth from the city's
side, So early walking did I see your son.'
That might easily be Wedekind's Moritz. ‘Compare her
face with some that I shall show, And I will make
thee think thy swan a crow.' What a joyous speaker. What a treat of
an actor.
However I'm not sure that the general moves, so
split-second, spot-on in the Wedekind, couldn't have been sharper
defined here, including Benvolio's. It applied to Gabrielle Dempsey's
female Tybalt: again, her ‘resexing' an error, for with a little
finessing and slightly less sidling around, Dempsey – in the other show
a wonderful Wendla - came close to offering a perfectly acceptable
‘male' Tybalt. Re the moves, Lewendel is too perceptive, thoughtful and
incisive a director not to have firmed up some of this side-business,
and added a few more salient gestural details. If Icarus's Romeo
limped just occasionally (in a very long tour, it should be added) it
was in these ancillary touches, not in the main thrust. The ultimate ancilla, of course, is
Juliet's Nurse, and she is anything but a spare part. Gemma Barrett
caught my eye even in the lesser, early scenes of Frau Bergman, Wendla's
mother in Spring Awakening. Here she effortlessly carried off the
honours. This nurse, bustling, conniving, periodically strutting like a
bossy peacock, was utterly insuppressible. Her scenes with Juliet were a
joy; those with Romeo, an education.
On Tybalt's death (he like Juliet, nursed by her)
she explodes like Margaret of Anjou (and just imagine what a Richard
III this youthful, comely team could deliver). Barrett effortlessly
plays age; she has the looks, the sidelong glances, the pausing
hesitations, the confidential knowledge, the radiant nostalgia, the
thrust and flamboyance to capture every whisper of Nurse's character,
like a Mistress Quickly, and bring new freshness to old lines. It's a
handsome, gifted, inspiring team all round, but Barrett, who could be
snatched by the RSC tomorrow, is the best here by a few miles. She and Laurence, like just about everyone in
this play, are tragic heroes. Laurence witnesses the futility of his
reverend, worldly wise, miscalculated – infatuation, is it? – for a
sprouting teenage boy, almost his apprentice. Barrett's West Country
nurse is the victim of as shattering a rejection as Prince Hal's of
Falstaff – although she (nominally) does not hear it. When Juliet seizes
command (‘What villain, madam? Villain and he be many miles asunder'),
no longer demure, her turncoat helper dispatched (‘Go, counsellor; Thou
and my bosom henceforth shall be twain') she grows in such stature here
that there is no stopping. In order to die, she becomes an adult.
Ironic, then, that the ‘villain' line has been
aped by Juliet herself already (‘But, wherefore,
villain, didst thou kill my cousin?'); though exonerating Romeo with
‘That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband.' Nicole Anderson, expressive, tempting, compelling
as the kind of earth goddess figure in Spring Awakening, has by
this stage upgraded her melting performance – the little girl - to a
superb new persona: ‘Take up those cords: poor
ropes, you are beguiled…He made you for a highway
to my bed; But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.
Come, cords, come, nurse; I'll to my wedding-bed;
And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!'
His cord-climbing visit on wedding night may or
may not have claimed her maidenhead: Lewendel, leaving us in no doubt
about the ambiguous rape in Spring Awakening, presents things as
chastely as Zeffirelli's 1968 film, which at least offered a sash window
shot of Leonard Whiting's youthful(ish) bottom. Dubois would have done
nudity with aplomb. No full frontal. No hint of a maidenhead-bespattered
nightdress. ‘We relish what others shy away from, show what others
daren't.' Cutting-edge Icarus's take on first-time-in marital coition
seems to have gone AWOL. Now with its own rather smart and desirable one-
or two-room rehearsal space (available for hire, 0207 998 1562, email
hire@icarustheatre.co.uk) opposite its offices near Oxford Circus, right
in the heart of London's West End, Icarus, which aims to mount two
mid-scale tours and one fringe production annually, has Ionesco's The
Lesson – which drew prizes and accolades in Romania (‘50s absurdism
made over as 90s, in-yer-face apocalypticism!" - Time Out) – back
in repertoire; as well as the forthcoming tour of Othello and
what promises to be a searing Hedda Gabler (early 2014 at Nothing could have proved the value of Icarus's
usually no-holds-barred approach than the audience at the Gatehouse. It
consisted almost entirely of youngsters who would have been precise
contemporaries of Romeo and his fair Juliet, Tybalt and Benvolio.
Pouring into the theatre, or milling (but not buying) in the bar, they
looked like Dubois and Smart and So - it's surely a pity that Icarus - at present
- visits so few West
Romeo and Juliet
is at
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