There were several audience participation firsts in the weekend Barbican Theatre visit of Roman Tragedies from the Toneelgroep in Amsterdam.

You could come and go as you liked, wander onto the stage and have a glass of wine, read a newspapaper or check your e-mails.

I even enjoyed a quick word with the gorgeous satuesque blonde actress playing Octavius (Cassius was played by an equally attractive brunette) in the onstage hair salon, while I noticed Lyn Gardner of the Guardian took the weight off her feet on a comfy grey sofa during the tent scene in Julius Caesar.

The whole show was absolutely brilliant, not only in its editing and elision of Coriolanus with first Julius Caesar and then Antony and Cleopatra, but in it acting and presentation of the political and domestic scenes in a contemporary, media-saturated neutral grey conference centre; it’s our world these guys are carving up, and we were right there in the middle of it.

At Friday’s show, I spotted Royal Court and Young Vic directors Ramin Gray and Joe Hill-Gibbins blending in with the scenery, as well as actor Scott Handy and cultural fixer Ruth Mackenzie necking a cold beer during the conspiracy scene.

It was Ruth’s advocacy of Roman Tragedies last year that led to Barbican theatre director Louise Jeffreys hot-footing it to the Avignon Festival to sign it up, more or less on the spot.

And quite right too. This was a major event in the year’s theatre calender and it’s only the most terrible shame that, like many a great visiting production from abroad, it was here for such a short time.

Even a broken leg couldn’t detract from the quality of the acting. Hans Kesting, who plays Mark Antony, had sustained the accident last week in Amsterdam but he battled gamely on in a wheelchair and plaster cast, whizzing around the open plan set like a mad granny in the supermarket aisles, tearing bargains off the shelves and crying out for a loan of some ears.

There was a lot of Sapphic snogging in a brutal political world suddenly invaded by women, but the dynamic of all the plays was wonderfully honoured and the editing of them in five hours’ playing time, with a series of short intervals for scene changes, superb. 
 
Oddly enough, Scott Handy was blending in again on Saturday night as the invented character of “the writer” in Ruper Goold’s wonderful revival of Turandot at ENO.

What’s the matter with opera critics? One of these spoilsports even suggested that the production was so disgraceful that it should be withdrawn immediately.

It’s perfectly logival to set the show in a Chinese restaurant/bar area with the third act backstage in the killers’ kitchen. Goold is referencing not just his own Macbeth but also Tarantino, Peter Greenaway and the Chapman brothers, and there’s nothing forced about it at all: an ideal context for a gruesome fairy tale in a land habitually casual with its human rights and freedom of speech.

And that’s where Scott came in, in his white linen suit and red trainers, making it up in his notebook until things go wrong and the loyal slavegirl Liu kills herself (performance of the night by South African soprano Amanda Echalaz) and the vile princess melts.

Protesting at the story twist, Scott’s fatally assaulted by Turandot and spends the rest of the show slithering around the stage covered in blood.

There’s all sorts of great detail in Goold’s prodcutioon, but none of it is extraneous or gratuitous. One lovely touch is the playing of the emperor, Turandot’s father, as a drunk hauled in off the street to preside over the pageant, rather like Azdak in The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

The audience loved it, though felt a bit short-changed in not being allowed to clap at the end of “Nessun Dorma,” which is a bit spoilsporty of Rupe and conductor Ed Gardner. Otherwise: like the Dutch show, absolutely brilliant, with Scott playing his part in a ringside seat at both.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 7:06 am and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.