James III: National Theatre Scotland

This week I had an extra special theatre experience at the National, watching the National Theatre of Scotland's James III - from the stage.

Jamie Sives (Game of Thrones) and Sofie Gråbøl (The Killing). 

King James III and Queen Margaret of Denmark.

Photo Credit: National Theatre.

Click here to see trailer.

Theatre in the round

James III is one of a trio of plays by Rona Munro charting the history of the first 3 James kings of Scotland. It was originally performed at Edinburgh International Festival in the round and they've copied this format for the performance in the Olivier Theatre. This meant I got to go back stage. It was so magical to see the engine rooms of the National Theatre, the backstage props and the perspective of performers looking out on an audience from the stage.

The play itself is a contemporary rendering of the history of James III of Scotland by Rona Munro. Both acts commence with a ceilidh band playing 'Born this way' and other modern classics which subtly allude to the plot. The characters wear modern dress with the odd nod to the fifteenth century (a la Robin Hood circa 2006).

Jester King

James' court is portrayed rather like that of King Henry VIII's in The Other Boleyn Girl, pretty poor girls, poor economic decisions and banishment of the privy council. I particularly enjoyed the moment where James III sacrifices the funds for a pilgrimage to Avignon to instead employ a choir to follow him round at all times to make life more 'beautiful'.

This play is all about the girls; the mistresses, the mothers and the formidable Danish queen, Margaret, who might be a bit past her best but has one hell of a head on her shoulders. Beyond the privy council, the nobles, Lord John and sibling rivalries the real power is held by the girls. There was a particularly strong performance from Sofie Gråbøl showing depth of character and progression.

Poignancy of timing

I watched this play one week after Scotland's referendum. There are plenty of references to the relationship between England and Scotland as James III constantly suffered the threat of English invasion and coercion. Munro illustrates the links between the historical political circumstance and that of today very well, so  little has changed in 500 years. A contemporary play, James III gave me an insight into how Shakespeare's history plays must have been received by the audience of the day; the parallels to their modern day circumstances must have been clear.


The show was a sensation, taught me loads of Scottish history and provided a unique backstage tour as part of the bargain. I'm really looking forward to seeing the first of the trio, James I, in a few weeks time.

King James is played by Game of Thrones star, Jamie Sives, and Margaret of Denmark by Sofie Gråbøl from The Killing. James III features full nudity and is not appropriate for those under 14 years old. The three James plays run daily in rotation, you can still get tickets for £15 until 29th October.

People: Alan Bennet's Play

One of the first plays I saw at the National Theatre was an Alan Bennett play, The History Boys featuring the original cast; Corden, Cooper, Griffiths and in my opinion the best, Parker.  Having also performed in Talking Heads and seen other Bennett material staged, when People was announced I was excited. My well-worn Entry Pass got another airing for Bennett’s new play.

People, is the story of a country house and its destiny as lived by an elderly dowager, called Dorothy. It questions the immutability of time and the necessity of organisations like the National Trust. It was a particularly interesting play for someone with an interest in heritage because it always comes back to ‘what is worth preserving? And why?’.

The play opens with two old ladies in a big country house and the entrance of a young man wearing only a military jacket. From that point on Bennet both amuses and informs; especially when his play was furnished by such a stellar cast, De La Tour (who knows about timely delivery of a line), Jupp (playing a stereotypically dower and slightly slimy salesman) & Cadell as the Deacon of Huddersfield. He marries church and state, humour and a very serious agenda, porn and country houses.

(De La Tour & Linda Bassett in a light hearted moment)

National Trust as auctioneer & little England

In People Alan Bennet is evidently very critical of the mercenary attitude he considers the Trust to have taken on. As a reflection of changes in society, anything is for sale; Bevan claims his group even ‘bought Anglesey recently’. When asked about his evident objections in interview Bennet said, ‘‘Less and less are we a nation and more and more just a captive market to be exploited…That a Methodist church in Bournemouth has been bought and re-opened as a Tesco is hardly worth mentioning…My objections to this level of marketing are not to do with morals but to do with taste’. And this attitude comes out time and time again in his play. These objections often find their voice in the character of Dorothy who would rather have an ensuite bathroom and a porn film filmed in her lounge than leave her house to the National Trust. The reaction from the National Trust as voiced by Ivo Dawnay is as follows, ‘It’s sad that the world is very commercial but we need money to do our conservation work and if we are going to save beautiful places, we need to have the funds to do that.’

What is worth preserving?

The key question this play seeks to ask is, ‘What is worth preserving? And at what cost?’. Is the shell of a well-loved house in a state of disrepair really worth saving, when all Dorothy wants is a ‘non-arctic bathroom’, when the house is anything but unique, when it doesn’t really have a narrative to ‘sell’ it, when Dorothy must pay in order to donate her house to the Trust. As Dorothy notes ‘not caring is what has preserved them’. The young man representing the Trust raises a question even of what is worthy of saving, regarding Mazer prison he asks, ‘Do we…save them? Do we restore the patina? I think we do. I think we must’. It seems that for Bennet there is too much interference with the passage of time and decay which according to one character in the play ‘is a kind of progress’.

National Trust as church

During my Masters I was obsessed with the issue of how space becomes place. What imbues a location with meaning? What might be too sacred to touch or interfere with?

This is a question Bennet asks quite deliberately by staging a porn film in the house and running it up against the visit of a bishop and the more savoury clientèle of the Anglican church/ National Trust. The metaphor of church and National Trust is made explicit ‘The Trust is a church too and in the piety and devotion of its members one that would rival the Anglicans…the cars boast their pilgrim badge, the stickers the holy houses where they have paid homage and the sacrament they have received of coffee and walnut cake’. Not only is this hilarious, and true, it is also not a new metaphor, see Burch 

The sacred items in this secular church are also a little bit odd. He highlights the way in which National Trust properties land on anything that will create a story, even pot-pans used in the Billiard room by famous people in this case. Along with the servants quarters and the old croquet set, even Dorothy is coerced into being part of the visiting experience, she ruminates on the way people process museums now, ‘And not even looking. Snapping it. Ticking it off. I don’t want to be ticked off’. The National Trust man responds saying, ‘there is nowhere that is not visitable. That at least the Holocaust has taught us’. The horror implied in Bennet’s narrative of the fact that everything must be sacrificed to the mass consumer on the altar of ‘The Past as Experience becomes truly evident’.

Whilst Bennet is flippant and occasionally represents his subjects in a way that is truly farcical he has a point to make. What is really worth sacrificing for the good of ‘England’ if there really is such a thing? Is it worth the unhappiness of two women in their dying days, the sacrifice of ‘reality’ for some imported story, ‘Country houses are window dressing. They mitigate nothing’. His point is that they mean, nothing. Access to country houses for the masses changes very little. ‘The Trust wants to get people in, we want to keep them out. Either way the house is preserved.’

PST (people spoil things)

Early in the play Bevan, the auctioneer introduces us to his little saying, ‘PST: people spoil things’; he advocates not the democratisation of heritage but its siphoning off. Dorothy makes the point that whether people are included or excluded, ‘either way the house is preserved.’ The great irony of this play is the title, ‘People’ and the ostensible plot-focus, ‘a house’. Maybe the play isn’t about the house after all!

See this play at the NT, and if that’s too far to go see it in your local cinema, where its being streamed live on 21^st March.

Listening to Lord Farquaad (or Lithgow Talks!)

I love my National Theatre Entry Pass – it provides opportunities for young people to access groundbreaking theatre at discounted rates. When they told me John Lithgow – the voice of Lord Farquaad – was not only starring in a show but also doing a Q & A, and I could see both for £8, I booked it straight away.

(Dinner at the National Theatre)

Lithgow was interviewed by Nick Hytner, Director of the NT. The first thing I noticed when he stepped on stage was how tall he was!  It was a memorable opening as Lithgow described being born in a prop box. Born into a thoroughly theatrical family, Lithgow spent his childhood summers with his Dad’s Shakespeare troop in Ohio, starting with the small bit parts and graduating up to the young leads.

Lithgow was no fool and secured a scholarship at Harvard. He describes himself as the ‘best actor in Harvard by osmosis’ only a small underestimation of his evident dramatic talent (!) and a time of prolific output – he featured in some 8 or 9 plays per term and his repertoire had by this time expanded from Shakespeare to encompass several Russian playwrights among others . On some kind of Erasmus swap Lithgow made it to LAMDA which conferred on him a love of London and a convincing English accent, he describes it as like ‘swallowing a horsepill of Englishness’.

Lithgow also passed comment on his lifelong profession of acting deeming it a reckless and stupid career path. He has done numerous other things on top of acting to fill the quiet season from writing children’s books to conducting orchestras. He does this he says to avoid the actor’s agony of ‘waiting to be wanted’.

With this backdrop I ran off to speed munch my dinner and then returned to the front row to see Lithgow perform the lead role in Pintero’s  Victorian farce, The Magistrate. Damien Lewis loved it - he was sat about 6 rows behind me, desperately trying to keep a low profile. The play was everything I’ve come to expect from comedy at the NT, riotous, professional, splendid and slightly mad. The script set the action firmly in London and with my local interests that really pleased me! As ever the staging was central to the success of the play, this time it both rotated and rose on expensive mechanical, silent sets. Lithgow provided some hilariously comic moments particularly when acting out being attacked by a dog who obviously wasn’t there! And I loved the song about trying to guess the age of a lady; it was suggested you might chop her leg off and count the rings!

The Magistrate is on until March, there are plenty of discounted seats available and I can’t recommend it high enough!

Can We Talk About This - A review of Lloyd Newson's production

Any play that opens with the question, ‘Are you morally superior to the Taliban?’ (Martin Amis) was going to be controversial; but when that question is accompanied by a mirror that enables you to see your fellow audience and you are actually expected to answer the question, it is scandalous. Can We Talk About This? is the latest show I’ve seen at the National Theatre for a fiver!

 

(photo credit: Evening Standard)

Can We Talk About This? Is a piece conceived by Lloyd Newson and his equally controversial dance troop DV8. In the past Newson has thought about many other taboos, but this time he turns his eye to ‘Multiculturalism’. Through the mediums of dance and speech Newson challenges the audience to think about their definitions of terms like ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘racism’. It asks how far cultures should be allow to be independent of the state in which they live, and how much impact they should have on surrounding communities. It asks whose opinion matters, who is being heard and who is being silenced. It was really thought-provoking.

Newson wisely did not use his own words to discuss this sensitive issue; instead every word of the play is quoted verbatim from real people. His sources were varied including: Ishtiaq Ahmed Ex-General Secretary of the Bradford Council of Mosques), Roy Brown (International Humanitarian and Ethical Union at the UN), Ann Cryer (a former Labour MP) and Adnan Rashid (Senior Researcher at Hittin Institute). The sources represented differed age groups, job roles and creeds. The argument was two-sided; yes the behaviour of some Muslims was criticised, particularly in relation to the Theo van Gogh case and the threats to Hasan for his comments about evolution. But it is not just the minority ethnicities that are criticised. The case of Philip Bamforth, removed from his position as a ‘Vunerable Persons Officer’, due to pressure from local council because his story was ‘bad press’ for Bradford’s regeneration was told. So was that of Mizanur Rahman, sentenced for 6 years for holding a placard during the Rushtie Protests. There is at least an attempt to present a balanced view.

I do, however, have two criticisms of the play. One, although seeking to tell both sides of the story, the play was noticeably one sided, there were far more criticisms of outsiders than iniders. More importantly for a play ostensibly about ‘Multiculturalism’ its main complaint seemed to relate to people with Muslim beliefs. This complaint was also mentioned in Jury et al.'s review (read here). As such you might argue that the protest, when a man threw a missile at the stage and shouted, ‘This is Islamophobic crap’, was quite a legitimate criticism. Overall though, the play was challenging and has got me thinking about everything from power and the freedom of speech to law and society.

What really impressed me about the show was that a group of dancers got me thinking about law; that’s quite a jump I think you’ll agree. Where the quotes from sources provided a series of thought- provoking monologues and dialogues, the movement complemented it and kept it interesting. I particularly enjoyed the Anne Cryer scene where the dancer playing Cryer moved about the stage, teacup in hand and was manipulated by her ‘chair’. Similarly the portrayal of the baying masses as wobbly dancers who hop from foot to foot, provided some comedy in the midst of all the gravity. Every time a new case was discussed it was written on the back wall in charcoal. I liked this effect because it was like all the evidence was literally building up in front of you. The writing was literally, ‘on the wall’.

There was a noticeable lack of laughter during this performance. The shock was palpable, people gasped at Newson’s sheer balls, to be breaking taboos left right and centre. Whether that is bravery or stupidity depends I suppose on your perspective.

This show will make shockwaves, even if ‘Even the darkest sections are beautiful’ (Bishop), I wonder whether the show will make the end of its run (28^th March). I think people will be offended, but then maybe that’s the price of free-speech? (I told you the show was thought-provoking). Maybe we need to be having these conversations in theatre because in daily life, No I Don’t Think We Can Talk About This! It is too inflammatory, too personal a subject matter.

Can We Talk About This? Stunning choreography meets challenging material in a way that can only be called unique, see it if you can if only so we can have an interesting conversation.