12in12 - My Charles Dickens Birthday Project

Charles Dickens' books have been adapted so often we don't need to read them any more. Discuss.

Next month, February 2012, is a big birthday for Charles Dickens. How big? Two hundred. Two centuries since the birth of Charles Dickens. He won't be around for it, of course; he's been dead for most of those two hundred years. So we'll have celebrate the day without him (again). It's February 7th, since you ask.



Dickens has spent nearly two hundred years as one of Britain's foremost writers, Well, one of the English-speaking world's foremost writers, certainly of those last two hundred years. That's quite an achievement, and he's left a wide-ranging legacy, second only really to Shakespeare in the English language. What makes it more impressive is that Dickens wrote in so many genres, not just the novels he's famous for: short stories, travel writing, journalism, plays, poetry and general non-fiction.

His work has been adapted and reworked over and over again, working its way into the collective consciousness of the English-speaking world, again rather like Shakespeare. Dickens' Christmas stories have come to define the Victorian Christmas for those of us too young to remember the reality, made the festive season the popular holiday it now is, and still strongly influences our modern perception of Christmas. Adaptations of A Christmas Carol abound toward the end of every year, and Scrooge has come to be a widely-recognised term for someone like Dickens' infamous character.

Even before the BBC started rummaging through the Dickensian back catalogue for their current season of work devoted to Charles (or Boz, as he sometimes preferred), he was frequently the subject of adaptations. Not only have Dickens' books been adapted, but he himself often appears for public readings (as the man himself did while still alive) – the most famous perhaps being Simon Callow's portrayal alongside Christopher Eccleston in the new Doctor Who.

In fact, Dickens seems to have been adapted so often that it seems we don't really need to read his books any more. I've certainly seen A Christmas Carol on stage enough times that I know the story and characters as well as if I'd read it. And that's the curse of the writer of 'classics', of members of the canon of 'great' writers; people don't actually read their books any more. As Mark Twain quoted a Professor Winchester: a classic is something everybody wants to have read, but nobody wants to read. Mind you, I'm always wary of Mark Twain quotes; they're prone to being greatly exaggerated.

I thought I'd celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Dickens' birth by actually reading some of these books that made his name and legacy. My birthday present to him will be to read twelve of Dickens' books in a year (I'm aiming for one in each month, of course). That's roughly eleven more Dickens books than I've managed to read in my life to date (1988-2011). For someone with an English Literature degree, I consider that a pretty poor effort.



To kick off my Dickensian effort (see what I mean? Dickens is sufficiently well-established that we have an adjective for him and his work which immediately conjours up a certain type of character and location, usually something Victorian and in London), I'll be starting with a Christmas short story: The Chimes.

So, welcome to my Dickensian sort-of extravaganza (can an extravaganza take place over twelve months? is that over doing it?). I call it 12in12, and I hope you stick around until the (bitter?) end.

So far I've covered:
January - The Chimes
February - Hard Times: For These Hard Times
March - Bleak House
April - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
May - American Notes for General Circulation(coming soon...)

Thanks to Will Clayton for the birthday cake image.

The other images depict Dickens at a reading of his own, and Fringe Festival stalwart Pip Utton playing Dickens.

Then we've got the cover of the Complete Dickens Kindle edition, 99p from Amazon.

Some advice for journalists in the post-News of the World world

Some advice to journalists in the post-News of the World world; To Hack or not to Hack

Dear Journalists,

so, phone-hacking, eh? News of the World, huh? Well, that all blew up in their faces a bit. Or someone's faces anyway, I gather the actual culprits had already left (of course they had, of course). But, look, there are lessons to be learned here – just listen to Ed Miliband bang on about the lessons for everyone to learn when he was on Newsnight on Friday. And if Miliband Jnr's spotted them...

Where journalists went wrong here was in their choice of target (aside from the phone-hacking thing being illegal at the best of times). I mean, we hardly cared about an actor or Deputy Prime Minister getting hacked, but you go for a missing schoolgirl's phone and the nation's up in arms. It may be a cliché, but we do seem to love an underdog in this country. Target the powerful and we'll let you off. Target the vulnerable and we'll bite your hand off...or at least write strongly worded letters to rival newspapers.

Thing is, there are three types of people whose stories sell newspapers (and yep, because newspapers – especially tabloids – are driven by what we'll pay to read, it's kind of the public's fault too, a bit). I turn to our old friend William Shakespeare to explain them.

“Some are born to publicity. Some achieve publicity, and some have publicity thrust upon them.”

To take that one at a time...

“Some are born to publicity”
For example, the Royal Family. It's not their fault (honest) and they can't help it (really); if your mum is the head of state, your every move will be of interest to someone. These people have no choice about the public spotlight, and we can only hope that through a lifetime's exposure to it, they'll learn to handle it (there's still time for Prince Philip, fingers crossed).
These people probably have stories worth telling, so go ahead and get them (legally), but tread carefully; they are influential and know powerful people...not for nothing has that family been 'in charge' for centuries.

“Some achieve publicity”
For example, actors or politicians. It is very much their fault that they're in the limelight; they've sought it. They're either performers (of some kind or another) who've actively pursued public interest for the sake of their careers, or they're politicians who've gone out of their way to get noticed and elected to public office. Once in public office or on stage/screen/radio/print, they are of course interesting to the public.
Reporting stories about those in public may well serve the public good, and those should be encouraged. If you've a story about a celebrity, great, go for it, they'll probably help you out because they think any publicity is good publicity (unless they try to gag you, in which case you know you're into something).

“Some have publicity thrust upon them”
For example, people caught up in national tragedies, disasters or victims of crime. These are people like the families bereaved after the July 7th terror attacks. They've got a story, certainly, but if they don't want to tell it you, tough. They haven't gone looking for publicity, it's come to find them (along with something horrible in their lives), and the last thing they need is some journalist poking around their inboxes.
Stories about these people are fair enough, but don't be insensitive about them.

Thing is, the British public – as journalists can't have failed to notice over the last few years – always need a hate figure, some group of people to target all our latent anger and aggression at. Maybe it's because we're so reserved and/or apathetic most of the time and we need to vent a bit. Not so long ago, it was bankers for screwing up the economy. Before that it was MPs for...well, various things – cash for honours, fiddling their expenses, generally getting things wrong etc etc.

This week, it's your turn. Take it on the chin. Have a look at Shakespeare's contribution above, then go and dig some dirt on people worth doing it over. Or find another hate figure...we'll lap up a good hate figure.

The Man Who Was Hamlet @ The Edinburgh Fringe

The ThreeWeeks review of The Man Who Was Hamlet:

Several people have been proposed as the 'real' author of Shakespeare's works (a lowly glover's son couldn't have written such works of genius, surely?) So who was William Shakespeare? George Dillon's masterful one-man show puts forth a strong case that 'Shakespeare' was actually Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Resurrected for an hour's stage time, Oxford's Elizabethan ghost recounts his life story in a biography similar to Shakespeare's own, and Dillon's voice is deliciously versatile, though sometimes his characters need more differentiation. My advice is, make a bingo card with Shakespeare's plays on it, and tick them off as you spot references to them; should you get a full house, after the play has finished, you can run out into the street and shout "I'm Shakespeare!"

Hill Street Theatre, 5 - 30 Aug (not 10, 17, 24), 7.10pm , £7.00 - £9.00, fpp 269

tw rating: 4/5

The original review is here.

'Mankind' at Hull Uni

As an audience, we kind of knew where Hull Drama Department's Mankind was going once the first character started speaking.

As Emily Napier paced onstage, hands clasped in prayer, rosary beads knocking against the robes marking her out as a Dominican friar, the feeling grew that a message was coming to our souls. Then, she ascended the pulpit – the only notable thing on the stage, apart from the two paintings, depicting Heaven and Hell – and announced her name and intention. Okay, so to describe Napier's character as a character is a bit misleading. She's playing Mercy, and that's not her name; it's what she is.

See, Mankind is a Medieval Morality play, and they were never big on individual characters and plot lines. Instead, the Morality play depicts personifications of broader concepts usually involved in some cosmic struggle for the soul of, well, mankind. It's where the idea of an Everyman comes from. In this case, Mankind is a character – played with a curiously brazen naivete by Felicity Rankin, until her final scene when the full weight of her wrong doing is evident in every sob and shake of her shoulders – over whom Jen Clarke's leery, crooked jester Mischief fights with Mercy.

As is standard Morality practice, Mankind faces temptation to leave his work and abandon his prayers, and thus his duty to God. That God is – though never seen – present throughout, the Dominican friars' motto 'Veritas', Latin for 'truth', being emblazoned across the back of a largely bare stage. It's a bareness that really focuses attention on the battle that is essentially happening within the soul or mind of each of us: the battle between toiling for the common good and indulging in personal enjoyment. That temptation takes the form of three representatives of worldly pleasure: Andrew Fowler's Newguise, who threatens to steal the show, Harriet Entwhistle's deceptively charming Nowadays and Ami Dawson's Nought, who relishes every chance to speak filth on stage.

Don't be fooled by the idea of the Morality play being nice and clean – it's a lesson to us sinners about what we should avoid. So the three worldly pleasures get to party for most of their stage time, and even bring in Jessica Duffield's imposing Titivillus (the Devil, to you and me). That lesson makes the church's presence painfully clear. Mankind isn't quite propaganda, though it's probably a good example of the Catholic church using art to persuade people that worship (in a church, not on your own terms) is a Very Good Thing. Mischief's greatest victory seems to be in persuading Mankind not to attend morning prayers – even though an omnipotent God would surely hear a prayer wherever it was said...

In the end, that may be Mankind's failing as a modern piece of theatre. It's far from subtle, and the word 'preachy' seems dying to attach itself to every moment of the stage time – not only during Mercy's sermons. Don't get me wrong, Napier delivers some very heartfelt moments without ever being patronising, but ultimately this is a piece of theatre designed to remind the masses what they owe to their overlords in the Catholic church, who very kindly mediate between them and their God.

When Napier enters, hundreds of years of theatrical history are wiped away, and we've been taken back to the didactic, characterless drama that went out of fashion around Shakespeare's time. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but this does function as a bit of a museum piece. It's interesting as a means of looking back at where later drama came from – for example English drama's move toward representative characters in increasingly realistic settings, before making the characters increasingly realistic too. Also – crushingly, for this performance – the power of the Catholic church and an audience's fear of God aren't what they were, which takes away much of this play's sting. Pity, really.

Macbeth @ Hull Truck

This is a Macbeth that's very much about the audience. No matter where they turn, Shakespeare's Scottish nobles, caught in the close press of Hull Truck's staging, can't escape the eyes fixed on them.

Mainly because Gareth Tudor-Price's adaptation is being staged in the round, which is a first for the new Hull Truck space – and a welcome one. Reducing the playing area has brought the audience closer to the actors than previous productions, serving to increase the audience's sense of involvement as well as bringing back a little of the claustrophobia of the old Spring Street venue (or tin shed).

Intimacy and claustrophobia are two things Tudor-Price and his northern cast are very keen on in this production; even the lighting rig has been lowered to compress the space.
The seven-strong cast give a fast-moving performance, rarely pausing for breath or silly things like scene changes. In a way, that's classic Truck – the reclaimed wooden board set is stripped bare, and costume changes are kept to a minimum (so much so that it can be hard to distinguish between some of the characters). It's also classically 'new Ferensway venue' to have vast amounts of haze pumping onto the stage. For once, the haze lends an incredible atmosphere to the play; murky, bleak and sinister all at once.

On the down side, involving the audience so much leads to several scenes being delivered (with not much sense of movement) out to the main seating block, as though the Truck were still in its normal arrangement. Yes, the cast is playing to the majority of the audience, but at the expense of truly playing in the round. A key advantage of staging plays in the round is that the audience can be more easily made to feel that they're eavesdropping, flies on the wall in a conversation between people unaware of their existence. Actors declaiming into the middle distance spoils that a bit.

Tudor-Price's adaptation removes the physical presence of the infamous witches and instead places them around the stage, often as whispering voices with an eerie backing track. They form another audience, always watching the action, as none of the actors ever leave the stage. It's the sort of directorial trick – Tudor-Price is aiming for a highly ritualistic portrayal of the witches – that looks promising when the show opens with the cast's only woman (Fiona Wass) drawing a tight, occult-type circle in the middle of the stage, while everyone stands around looking ominous in their long leather coats. Later, Lady Macbeth uses the same circle to summon the spirits of the night, and it's a chilling flashback to that opening moment. But other than that, there's precious little witchery. All of the supernatural messing with Macbeth's head is just that – in his head.

Don't get me wrong; James Weaver gives a very strong, solid and captivating performance as the Scottish thane promised the crown by a bunch of witches and spurred on by his wife to kill King Duncan. His relationship with Lady M sizzles, their power balance shifting in every scene, always raw with passion. A shame, then, that their supporting cast is a bit patchy, a bit hit-and-miss. Weaver is the best man onstage for listening to those around him, his face (or sometimes even his shoulders) enough to tell the way his thoughts are going. He justifies Lady M's description of his face as a book in which his thoughts can be read.

With all that haze, the lighting for Macbeth is at times genuinely beautiful, evoking different shades of night as well as the heath and castle, and even making the floorlights look like small torch fires (that probably wasn't deliberate, but looked great). The whole production fits into a sparse, brutal vision, where nobody seems to like anyone else apart from Duncan (the Macbeths like each other, of course) and everyone's on edge. The fights aren't so good to watch – too ritualistic, perhaps, a case of heavy-handed 'one-two, one-two' – but otherwise it all looks lean and mean.

Hull Truck has given the city a Macbeth they can get their teeth into, in an accessible version of Shakespeare's great tragedy.

Up 'n' Under @ Hull Truck

A rugby ball sits, waiting, centre stage. A rugby ball-shaped spotlight focusses on it. Smoke fills the stage, beams of light shooting downwards. Is it Wembley? The Millennium Stadium? A true Theatre of Dreams, a Stadium of Light? It's certainly a big arena set-piece to open John Godber's Up 'n' Under at Hull Truck.

Godber allegedly wrote this play after promising to do so at his interview for the job of Artistic Director at Hull Truck. That was twenty-five years ago, and now the Truck has resurrected this tale of a failing rugby side struggling against both themselves and formidable opposition. In a way, it hasn't aged too well, the casual homophobia still being lapped up by 2009's audience. But this audience also laps up the local colour, the banter and the camaraderie of Godber's team. He sets up a fierce rivalry early on, which gets laughs and sets a lightly confrontational tone throughout – what do you expect from a play about rugby with five men and only one woman?

It's in the next scene that Godber triumphs though. It works when he keeps away from the grandiose themes and styles, instead giving the people what they want by sticking some northern blokes in a room to moan and bicker. This is – if you'll pardon the unintentional pun – Godber's home turf, and the scene is a masterclass in both character and dialogue, each line rushing the scene to its conclusion via a joke. Masterful.

You could probably criticise the casting of this play – the singer can't sing, and some argue that Abi Titmuss is just there for the headlines. But at least there's eye-candy for both halves of the audience, and (like many Truck plays) the cast are highly plausible as a unit, if not as individuals. Speaking of eye-candy, Titmuss surely doesn't need to do quite so much work alone in her onstage gym...does she?

There comes a time in this early play when a teacher writes a poem based around the opening of Romeo & Juliet. He actively apes the style of Shakespeare, and the same can be said of Godber throughout the play; he gives an epic scope to the action that tries to raise it above the level of mere amateur rugby up to something higher, something grander. Take, for example, Titmuss setting the scene in heroic fashion before the action starts (then later reminding us of the story so far, in case we'd forgotten...after the first scene), very Henry V. That stadium feels like just one part of Godber's plan to make everything much bigger than it really is. But for all his knowingly-dropped titbits from Henry V and King Lear, Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, Godber can't get away from the fact that his story is about some blokes who are out of shape and need chivvying up.

What we're presented with is very much a populist piece of theatre. It doesn't engage with any big themes, apart perhaps from the effects of ageing. What it does do very well is tell an encouraging story and raise laugh after laugh, in classic Hull Truck style – no surprise, as this is probably the play which, more than any other, set the benchmark for that style back in the mid-eighties. The ripping of Shakespeare certainly feels like a new writer showing us what he knows and trying things out.

Viewed in such terms, this is a massive success, and deserves the rapturous applause it gets from a nearly-full house. How many of those kids were there because Up 'n' Under is a set text, or were there for Abi Titmuss, is debatable – but if they liked this (they should) and want to see more like it...who cares why they turned up?

Rozencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead @ the Edinburgh Fringe

The ThreeWeeks review of the American High School Theatre Festival's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which stops short of calling for a ban on AHSTF performances, even though they do horrible things to this gorgeous script:

What's it all about? So asks Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern, who knows, or cares?) at the end of Tom Stoppard's wordy, clever take on 'Hamlet'. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in Shakespeare's iconic tragedy, but take centre stage in this monotonous production. It's an ambitious project for an American high school to tackle – bringing so word-conscious a play (they miss most of the wordplay, in fact) to a British audience – and they don't really succeed in bringing it to life. Dedicated acting doesn't make up for clumsy staging, nor for lines gabbled at speed in order to keep the play within its advertised running time. Undeniably rushed, by a cast who don't appear to understand the majority of what they're saying.

tw rating: 2/5

On the positive side: Scottish crime-writer Ian Rankin (creator of Rebus) spoke to me in the queue outside, and somehow sat through the whole thing with his family.
On the negative side: after posting this review, I wondered if two stars were too generous.

Troilus and Cressida at Shakespeare's Globe

Who knew Shakespeare could be so homo-erotic?

It's probably because he's writing about the Greek army camping around the ancient city of Troy – and back then the Greeks had a bit of a reputation for all that man-on-man stuff. Mind, it's perhaps a reputation they've picked up in more recent times, rather than one they had at the time; these days we find the Greek system of male mentoring a bit odd. A system open to corruption and paedophilia, one that allows older men privileged access to young boys.

Special access is exactly what Matthew Kelly's unashamedly camp Pandarus has to Paul Stocker's cherubic Troilus at Shakespeare's Globe. Okay, they're doomed Trojans, not Greeks, but the same ideals seem to be in place – in fact these supposed foes meet often and seem to have a great deal in common, which just goes to show the futility of this war fought over willing abductee Helen. Pandarus arranges for Troilus to marry Cressida – a woman rather fancied in both camps, even by the effeminate, Russell Brand-style Achilles (Trystan Gravelle) – who is his niece. What's alarming about Kelly's patronage here is that – when told Cressida must be handed over to the Greeks in exchange for a captured Trojan noble – his fears are for Troilus, not his own niece. She's liable to be raped and kept as a slave, a woman loved by a prince of Troy, and her uncle cares more that his protege will be upset to lose his lover.

But then, in such a patriarchal society with male mentoring (called pedastry, fact fans), maybe the surprise ought to be that Troilus fancies a girl in the first place. Even the Greek ladyboys Achilles and Patroclus are rather taken with her, which seems to run against Shakespeare's decidedly un-Homeric description of Patroclus as Achilles' 'masculine whore'.

Shakespeare makes Achilles bisexual, rather than a heterosexual man with a male protege (as the Greeks would have seen him), a move extended by the Globe in their boisterously Boy's Own production. I say Boy's Own because the few women are either gorgeously sensual and hot for a man or are silly girls that can be easily ignored, while the hard, tough men go around bragging, shouting and bashing each other with sharp things.

Shakespeare's other departure from Homer's original Iliad is to move the focus away from Achilles, indeed away from anyone. The death of Patroclus is skimped over, like many of the revealing costumes, and most of the deaths you might expect from the (literally) legendary Trojan War simply don't happen.

Which just goes to show that these men are all talk and no trousers (ahem). Their fights aren't even as good as the ones in the Globe's Romeo and Juliet! Still, it does let Shakespeare have lots of brawny men clapping each other repeatedly on the muscles.

Richard III at Telford's Museum of Iron (Fringe Review practice)

**** A typically uplifting Shakespearean offering from the irreverent Oddsocks company.

Once again, this witty touring company take a Shakespeare play that's really a tragedy, and make their audience cheer, boo and – most importantly – laugh. That they do so in the rain is even more impressive.

Even for those of us not sure what to expect from an Oddsocks performance in the gentle drizzle of Telford's Ironbridge Gorge, Andy Barrow's opening line would have given a pretty good indication of what was to come. Perched atop the Oddsocks Tudor travelling cart, wig and false nose in place, the company's director and lead actor in Shakespeare's Richard III announced 'Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun...' Pause. A brief, irritated glance at the lowering clouds above. A briefer, tutting glance at the audience huddling beneath umbrellas. An arm stretched to the stage below him, from which Neal Craig's Edward IV has just departed, and Barrow continues, 'of York.'

Oddoscks is a company very much in tune with their audience and the space in which they perform. Their out-door Richard III demonstrates once again that they aren't scared to ad lib with their classic text, especially to adapt to local circumstances. Buckingham's (Edward Day) promised Earldom of Hereford becomes the (non-existent) Earldom of Telford, and Gloucester and Catesby (Kaitlin Howard) have an ad lib conversation about her wig being dislodged (during this, though probably not other, performances).

On the whole, Oddsocks keep it simple for their modern audience, explaining their characters beforehand and occasionally summing up the story in song form. Their staging is just the field of grass and their incredibly versatile wagon, which has all sorts of flaps and concealed sections ready to represent a bedroom, a prison, a throne room, you name it. Handily, they've also cut down some of the original, as Shakespeare could be a bit wordy at times, and Andy Barrow's adaptation nicely trims some of the fat off this particular bone.

Of course, the biggest challenge with an out-door show is likely to be the weather. On this occasion, the powers that be clearly weren't on the company's side. While the rain poured, the actors carried on, but there were times when the sound of rain on umbrellas drowned them out (no pun intended). Though they soldiered on, I'm sure Oddsocks' players would have had more vim, vigour and success in a sunny performance to an audience squinting in sunlight rather than squirming in rain. Their smiles helped, but a little more could have helped blast the proverbial clouds away earlier. Also, a little more voice work wouldn't go amiss, to avoid actors losing their voices to the vastness of the Ironbridge Gorge. But maybe that's just a venue issue, considering they've always been loud enough in custom-built outdoor spaces.

But, as a performance bringing an under-performed Shakespeare to the public, this succeeds in making it entertaining and funny while staying true to the original story and characterisation. That so bloody and political a play is funny makes this a worthy addition to the Oddsocks canon, and is a tribute to their irreverent style.

The Winter's Tale at the RSC Courtyard: in 150 words

It's the play with that immortal – and tricky – stage direction 'Exit pursued by bear', and on seeing the RSC do Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, I have to wonder if he just wanted it to be difficult to stage. Maybe he hoped it would be left alone, slightly like Artaud's The Spurt of Blood, which is famously difficult to perform. Shakey's given this an unbalanced plot, with a sudden geographical and chronological jump, and hasty decision-making from characters who should know better. Then there's that audacious final twist (and the bear feels like a last-ditch effort at making it all impossible to stage). But, somehow, the RSC make it work. Their evident confidence in their own abilities is justified, and the tone they strike is absolutely right. They hold the half-formed threads of this thing together carefully, but wonderfully. And that bear is a triumph of puppetry.

Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare's Globe

There comes a moment in any play on Shakespeare's own stage at the Globe when everyone has to have a song and dance. Even if it's only the bows. This Summer's Romeo and Juliet is no exception. But, at the heart of the dancers, centre stage, there's a problem. Look at Romeo (Adetomiwa Edun), in the middle of the capering, clapping cast. His hand brushes Juliet's, their arms cross each other's shoulders, his young eyes fixed dead ahead, slightly above the heads of his audience. He stamps, he claps, he jumps (not quite so high as the comparatively tiny Juliet (Ellie Kendrick)), he twirls. His limbs are stiff, his expression fixed. Our young lover is just going through the motions of the dance.

Alas, that's true of the youthful courtship throughout most of this production of Shakespeare's most famous love tragedy. While in the first half, Edun and Kendrick capture a tender, quivering adolescent shyness with each other in their first kiss, their post-coital moments is distinctly lacking in physical contact, and they still seem a tad nervous about touching each other –it's a bit late for nerviness by then... Their youthful passions just don't light the stage, and lack the sort of all-consuming fire and desire that's needed for the eventual suicides.

Real grief makes itself known only when the supposedly dead Juliet is carried through the groundlings, and parts of the crowd have to shift to allow her to pass. Suddenly, the groundlings are a part of the sorrow of Verona, having to accommodate the loss of a family so far only watched from a distance. As Penny Laydon's Nurse's red face creases up with tears, a community mourns...despite most of us knowing that Juliet's not dead at all.

Our prior knowledge of some events feels a bit of a hindrance here, as a couple of speeches relate to other characters what we've just seen. Unfortunately, they aren't dramatic enough to make it worth repeating everything we've just seen. The other problem Shakespeare seems to have lumped this cast with is an obsession with the metre of the poetry. While much of this sounds beautiful, there are times when the company needs to allow the text (and themselves!) time to breath, and not rush out all the words as soon as think of them. The dying speech of Mercutio (Philip Cumbus) is especially in need of a little slowing down and consideration; much of its comedy is lost, as in most of his serious-minded performance.

While it's an encouraging – if easy – start to the Globe's Young Hearts Season (what Shakespeare could be a better example of young love?), Romeo and Juliet leaves space for the rest of the season to set the proverbial bar considerably higher.

Ashes to Ashes II Episode Four on BBC One

Operation Let's Round Off The Police Corruption Story Early In The Series (or Operation LROTPCSEITS, for short) this week. The episode opens with DCI Hunt (Glenister) and DI Drake (Hawes) slinking off together – to much sniggering – to carry out Operation Burnt Ring: the bugging of SuperMac's (Allam) office. At the end, a dying officer warns them about the oncoming Operation Rose (which may or may not be connected to the mysterious roses and phone calls Drake keeps receiving).

This week shows Allam's SuperMac as the nasty piece he's become – while highlighting the terrors of having the Police against you when his men ransack Drake's flat – as well as the decent, honourable man he once was. Hunt demolishes him with some stern words (“You've done some bad, bad things, Mac”) and a little shove – amazing, considering Hunt's normal technique – and the result is yet more superlative acting from Allam.

Now, I for one am no fan of dogs. Least of all barky ones with lots of teeth. So Hunt's method of removing the threat of the Rottweiler guarding the house of virgin-collector Jarivs (John Bowe) had me in stitches. It's classic no-nonsense Hunt, as well as a victory for dog-haters everywhere. Shaz is characteristically unimpressed, but we've come to expect that.

What's more distressing than doggy-death is that Ray (Dean Andrews) seems to have completely forgotten his Mason loyalties, and utterly fails to warn fellow Mason SuperMac about the approaching danger of Hunt and Drake (though why either of them thought he was a good person to confide in escapes me). It means that the Masonic story seems to have been put to bed in Episode Four...with half a series to go. So, that Operation Rose has got some time to bubble away (sorry, Allam's quasi-Shakespeare quote's still rumbling round my head), and it's bound to go higher than SuperMac.

Philip Holyman writes about Othello in the Metro

I don't know if anyone's read Philip Holyman's review of the Northern Broadsides' Othello, appearing in Metro on April 9th. I imagine someone has. I can't find it online, but I expect it'll go up at some point. It's only a two star review, and clearly Mr. Holyman wasn't very impressed with the show.

That in itself is fine; he's allowed to dislike it, no problem. Obviously, we all have different opinions on art, and he's entitled to his. If all critics agreed on everything they saw, we'd get nowhere, and art would become pretty stagnant. Diversity is pretty important in this field. Metro has apparently grasped this, considering that Mickey Noonan is so much more positive.

So should I worry that Holyman's review makes me angry? It's not that he dislikes the Broadsides and Lenny Henry's performance. That I can live with; it's his opinion, and he's right about Conrad Nelson's voice occasionally going a bit RP. What annoys me is the way that he doesn't seem to have tuned into what the Broadsides do and who they are. For a typical audience member, a member of the public, that would be understandable – but from a critic? I like the idea that the opinion-former of this piece – the critic – has a bit more information to go on than the average audience member. Surely, a critic ought to have the authority of a weight of experience behind them, they should sound like they know what they're talking about based on what's been done and seen before. Otherwise, why are they being paid for their opinion? I don't fault Holyman's opinion – it's an opinion, so entirely valid – but his review sounds so uninformed.

'Of course, Lenny Henry, in his first classical stage role, is the show's star
attraction'.

Well, alright, Henry is probably responsible for a large proportion of ticket sales, but Holyman completely overlooks the previous success of the Broadsides. They've been staging Shakespeare since 1992 (starting in Hull with Richard III), and with no small degree of success. They're (according to artistic director, Barrie Rutter) the biggest UK company touring to venues of different shapes – and they've got a solid international reputation. All of that happened long before Lenny Henry decided to have a crack at the Moor.

To come back to Mickey Noonan: 'Being Broadsides, it was never going to be a flop; this company never fails to put on a good show'.Yes, Holyman's point about Henry being a Box Office draw holds, but he manages to imply that the Broadsides couldn't have sold a tour of Othello by themselves. They could.

'Set and costume, score and (in particular) lighting are blunt and to the point,
never offering any instructive angle or comment on the play.'

But, Mr. Holyman, that's what the Broadsides do! First off, how much do you want in the way of costume? They were all dressed – for the same period – and always appropriately. What more do you want? The set was entirely sufficient; it gave background, it gave them some levels to play with, and it gave them several clearly defined areas on the floor – what more did they need? The score was another thing that did its job perfectly suitably.

But the lighting in particular, you say? Well...the Broadsides have never been ones for big spectacles. They – rather like the original stagings of the classical works they have made their speciality – don't use lots of special effects: smoke, lights, explosions, that sort of thing. They know perfectly well that there's no need for it. Rather, they allow a focus on the verse and the language of the plays they stage. Rutter is in love with the poetic verse of classical drama (be it Greek or Shakespearean), and his company has always left setting to the audience's imagination as much as possible. It's a bit like radio, in that the pictures are better than having a prescribed set that everyone has no choice but to see. The way they do it, we make the locations ourselves. Would you rather they dictated it all to you, Mr. Holyman? What the lighting in Othello did do was set out separate areas of the stage and offer them up for attention – that's all it needs to do.

'Cameo roles, such as [...] unforgivably, director Barrie Rutter's
Brabantio, are coarse and mannered'.

Unforgivable? What, that the director appears onstage? Why so, Mr. Holyman? With companies nationwide tightening their belts, but also having directors with acting experience (Rutter is one of the Broadsides' most experienced actors – he was Richard III), why is it a sin to save on the services of one actor? Admittedly, he's not their best actor, but Rutter isn't bad, and he nearly always has a role in Broadsides shows – whether he's directing or not. It's not like the Broadsides are the only people to employ an actor-director these days...

And then, on a purely writerly note, which I admit is a bit pretentious of me, this closing sentence:

'The show's only unqualified success is Richard Standing as Cassio, who alone
manages to give his character a tangibly real life without selling the beauty of
Shakespeare's text short'.

Firstly: unqualified? So, he hasn't qualified for that success, that Mr. Holyman then goes on to say he has qualified for? Secondly: that text is the one massively important thing the Broadsides go for. Mr. Holyman, you obviously noticed it, you're obviously aware of it, why have you not realised that it's what they're interested in? Thirdly: wouldn't that be a much better sentence if it read 'without selling short the beauty of Shakespeare's text'?

But maybe a review succeeds best when it provokes a reaction in the reader.

For he's a pretty good Othello (at the West Yorkshire Playhouse)

Barrie Rutter directs Lenny Henry as the title role in Shakespeare's Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.


It's not often you think that Shakespeare's tragic Othello might be being played as a comedy. But the Northern Broadsides have cast Dudley's comedian Lenny Henry as the Moor of Venice, and this idea takes a little getting used to.

In fairness to him, Henry is a pretty decent Othello, and a better actor than his TV work gives him credit for. He puts in a good turn as the black general in a white man's army, fighting the heathen Turk on behalf of the Venetian senate just after eloping with a senator's daughter. He shows us not only the stately nobleness of the honoured military genius, the boisterous glee of the newly-wedded lover, but also the shuddering confusion of the man tormented by his own jealous fears and the bursts of rage of the passionate man pushed too far. He is a restrained man in an alien world, with drinking games and loose morals. Deceit lies around every corner, and Othello is just that little bit too trusting to survive long in such a world.

Speaking of deceit, Conrad Nelson swaggers about the stage as an Iago keen to be everyone's confidential friend unless it serves his interests to be hostile to them. He pleads with Othello, his friendship and love for his boss drawing him to discreetly splash about his groundless insinuations, which then permeate and spread through Othello's mind. He's a bundle of feral energy, who somehow manages to cut a dashing figure in his burgundy military uniform.

The Northern Broadsides carry this tragedy off with customary panache, and in far better style than their Romeo and Juliet of last year. Their musicians are in fine form as ever, especially in a drinking game that looks like it may have first seen life in a panto routine somewhere. That's a compliment, by the way, to the stagecraft and handling of a complex set of exchanges. Naturally, the cast all use that 'northern voice' the Broadsides are so keen on. It's their hallmark, what they've become known for. That, and very little set. Othello has just a balcony, and a bed and torches for Desdemona's later scenes. What this means the Broadsides have to do is encourage the audience imagination. With their expansive black set, the Broadsides leave the words to set the scene, and the rest is up to us – turning the stage into a Cypriot street or the Venetian Senate chamber.

The northern voice thing is what makes it so interesting that Lenny Henry (Dudley's most famous son?) has been cast. I've nothing against his casting; he's good, surprisingly good for a comedian taking on a tricky tragic role – the fact that he is a black character written by a white man is sometimes painfully obvious. Henry's accent, though, is more difficult to place. His voice booms out, but where is it from?

It's a funny thing with criticism of classics like Bill Shakey's work, or even older things like the Greek tragedies, that we rarely seem to say much about the script itself (unless we're talking about a 'problem play', like The Taming of the Shrew or The Merchant of Venice). Some of these plays have become so enshrined in national consciousness that there's no point in mentioning things about script - the performance has become what matters. In some ways, that's a good thing; at least we aren't seeing them as only written documents, but as plays to be performed. But are they in danger of loosing their literary status? Is it allowed, or somehow a taboo, to criticse the Bard? Are we allowed to say - for example - that we'd like to see more of Othello's destructive jealousy before Iago has had chance to turn him against Desdemona? Is that so wrong? Or, can I praise the use of that fatal handkerchief at the end, that exposes Iago's villainy?