All’s Well That Ends Well

I seem to be in another Shakespeare immersion phase again – the fourth time in my life, I think. This time around I’m especially interested in the plays that I’ve failed to connect with well previously ‒ King John was something of a revelation last year.

Now it’s the turn of All’s Well That Ends Well, a wonderful production in the main house at Stratford. This is truly how I experience Shakespeare best: an uncluttered stage; real belief in the plot, the characters and the words; a modern staging, but without supermarket trolleys (Nancy Meckler the director); and great acting from a cast which was also a completely interdependent ensemble.

Especially noteworthy were Joanna Horton’s Helena, Alex Waldmann’s feckless Bertram, Jonathan Slinger’s brilliant Parolles, Greg Hicks’s King of France, and the fabulous Charlotte Cornwell’s Countess of Roussillion.

Together they made this often underrated “problem comedy” seem like genuine premier-league Shakespeare.

As You Don’t Like It

In the years leading up to the building of Shakespeare’s Globe on Bankside in London, the great motor force behind the project, Sam Wanamaker, used regularly to declare that actors would have to learn again how to act in this new space.

With no sound amplification and no roof, the challenge at the Globe would be how to project to such a substantial amphitheatre without loss of naturalness and relationship.

In reflection, I think it’s a clue as to why I was disappointed in the recent production of As You Like It in the enclosed main house at Stratford. Although they were in close proximity to each other, so many of the actors simply shouted. 

I thought we’d left all that behind us.

Snoozing through Julius Caesar

My colleague, Bill Boggs, came over from America to work with Andrew Bailey and me on a new book on creativity. (Sadly it never saw the light of day.)

Since we were nearby, I took them to a performance of Julius Caesar by the RSC in Stratford.

Quite early in Act One, I noticed that Bill was asleep. Irritated, I wondered why I had brought him along.

Then, later, I glanced in his direction again. He was awake. And his lips were moving constantly. He was silently mouthing the words of the play. All of them, apparently.

I didn’t know at that time that he suffered from sleep apnoea and was likely to drop off for a nap at any time.

Nor had I realised that he knew Julius Caesar inside out.