Middle Temple and Shaw-fire Riders
I never thought I’d go dancing in the hall where Twelfth Night was supposedly first performed in 1601, but so it turned out at a wedding party over the weekend. Like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, I can cut a caper when required, though I don’t pretend to have the back trick as strong as any man in Illyria…
Middle Temple has many more theatrical associations besides that play: members have included Thomas Shadwell and both the great Restoration Williams, Wycherley and Congreve.
Recent treasurers include the late Lord Weedon, chairman of the RSC, and counted among the current members is my friend Roger Wyand QC, whose niece Letty was married with all due pomp and ceremony in St Clement Danes before we removed for dinner and dancing in the hallowed hall.
Our theatrical provenance was boosted by the presence of Letty’s sister, Diana, who was a wardrobe assistant on the new James Bond movie, and the upcoming Miss Marple televison series starring Julia McKenzie, and Letty’s best friend Pascal, who works as Jamie Oliver’s on-line manager (and, coincidentally, with my son who is producing some television programmes right now with Jamie in Louisiana).
I’d last been inside the place forty years ago when a student production of Twelfth Night I was involved with played before the late Queen Mother. She graciously asked me what I had done by way of contribution to the show. I explained I was the assistant director to Jonathan Miller, which mostly involved rolling around on the floor trying not to laugh too hard at his jokes.
This answer seemed to satisfy her and she quickly moved on. I always remember her white powdered skin and yellow teeth. The latest Twelfth Night here was, I think, the Globe version with Mark Rylance as the definitive Olivia.
Curiously, you don’t feel that the place is haunted, or heavy with history. Its magical vibrancy is one of dedication to banquets and revels, and it’s a wonderful feeling to share in this with friends and relatives. Letty was marrying a Norwegian, and the groom’s family brought their own brand of partying to the Temple with their national costume and splendid post-prandial liqueurs.
Scandinavian, not to say Celtic, gloom did not get a grip until Sunday, with the final perfomance of Fiona Shaw’s production of Vaughan Williams’s setting of Synge’s Riders to the Sea at the Coliseum, and the first ninety-minute film of Kenneth Branagh’s Wallander series on BBC television.
Riders was supposed to have been conducted by Richard Hickox, who tragically died last week. Instead, Edward Gardner took charge of this powerful score, carefully set to Synge’s short play of death and grieving on the Aran Isles, and preceded by Sibelius’s short monodrama, Luonnotar, in which a lonely spirit of the air becomes pregnant by the waves and gives birth to the universe.
Susan Gritton sang this extraordinary piece from an upright fishing boat suspended in the sky. The boat then joined another four in representing the upturned coffins of the five dead sons of the grieving Maurya in the Synge sung by Patricia Bardon.
Shaw’s only mistake was to flood the stage with filmed projections of tumbling waves, dashing horses and the Worm Hole at Inis Mor, a coffin shaped pool to remind us of the play’s fatalistic death wish, but also creating an unnecessary busy-ness to her otherwise impeccably stark and moving production.
So to cheer myself up I went home to watch Wallander, a Swedish detective already dubbed the Norse Morse whose chaotic personal life is relieved only by finding himself in the middle of a crime wave of axe murders, child abuse and a sex slavery prostitution ring.
It was beautifully done, and Branagh is outstandingly good as Wallander, not least in the scenes with his long-haired painter father played by David Warner: two great Hamlets, side by side, mugs covered in stubble, facing the bleak future rheumy eyed and wiped out, their love lost in a cold climate.
Luckily for me I was still insulated against the winter chill with memories of my Middle Temple merriment. But I fear that may not last for the whole week…