A Review of the RSC Production at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Saturday 25th November 2006

When the RSC do something well they do it very well. When they do something badly they do it very badly, as was the case with the excruciating Hecuba a couple of years ago. But when they do something exceptional it remains in the memory for all time, as Greg Doran’s hilarious A Midsummer Night’s Dream has done, and most of the plays in the hard-hitting Gunpowder Series at the Swan last year. Dominic Cooke’s new production of The Winter’s Tale is exceptional.

And it’s exceptional at many levels, not least the acting, which is flawless, especially the interpretation of Shakespeare’s language, which must seem increasingly foreign to both speaker and listener alike in these text-sending abbreviated times, but can, when spoken well, be enlightening, mystical, humorous, and dark, very dark; and all of those elements apply to The Winter’s Tale. Try getting your chops around the following short speech by Leontes, and making sense of it, and giving the audience a chance - in the time it takes to count ten - to make sense of it…

No, in good earnest.
How sometimes nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines
Of my boy’s face, methoughts I did recoil
Twenty-three years, and saw myself un-
breech’d,
In my green velvet, my dagger muzzled,
Lest it should bite its master, and so prove,
As ornaments oft do, too dangerous:
How like, methought, I then was to this
kernel,
This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest
friend,
Will you take eggs for money?

Obviously, by reading and re-reading the above you are able, eventually, to get a sense of Shakespeare’s meaning, but it’s not easy. Put those lines in the mouth of a bad actor and they are gone forever, put them in the mouth of an actor with heart and intellect, or better still in the mouth of Anton Lesser (Leontes in this sparking production), an actor of huge heart and intellect, and you understand immediately how those words are the code to the inner paranoia that drives this King of Sicilia.

The man becomes the words, the words the man.

The Winter’s Tale was most likely written in 1610, with the London Globe performance of May 15th 1611, witnessed by a Dr Forman, who briefly describes the event in his unpublished manuscript, Booke of Plaies and Notes thereof - which is now locked away in some Oxford College gathering dust - where he criticises the fact that there are no five-measure lines of rhyme, but many double endings. And he’s right. The whole play is written in hard blank verse, or plain, steel-chiselled prose that pre-echoes Samuel Beckett in the way it can drive straight to the heart. It’s writing that takes no prisoners.

And like most of Shakespeare’s late plays The Winter’s Tale is too little performed these days because it’s often thought to be too difficult for modern players and audiences, which is double speak for saying it won’t attract good houses, as would, say, Romeo & Juliet at the one extreme, or Measure for Measure at the other. This RSC show puts the lie to that.

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North Face of Soho

Stratford-upon-Avon Civic Hall

There’s no doubt that Clive James is as good a talker as he is a writer - and he’s a brilliant writer - and as funny on his feet as he is on the printed page, which is a pretty good combination. Last Thursday evening (9th November) at the Civic Hall, he entertained a capacity audience for well over the allotted time of ninety minutes, which, according to James’ driver means he’s enjoying himself as much as the audience.

These so called ‘audiences’ are invariably little more than a showcase for a celebrity to sell a new and usually badly written book, which often results in a half-hearted, and lack-luster affair, where the celeb in question recounts all too familiar anecdotes, the veracity of which is often questionable. They are there, not to talk to and entertain an audience (who will have spent £15 - £18 on a ticket) but to fulfill the demands of a publisher’s contract.

Like the rest of them Clive James has a book to sell, but in this case it’s a rather good one called North Face of Soho, which is the fourth in his series of Unreliable Memoirs. And he got stuck into selling the thing from the start with an off-handed antipodean wit that could drag the required £17.99 out of the most scrooge-like of pockets. And let’s remember that James is a writer, so writing, and, when he gets the chance, selling books - his books - is what he does for a living. And you get the impression he has, and still does make a pretty good living.

A good living that was undoubtedly helped along by being one of the most familiar figures on our TV screens, interviewing the likes of Robert Mitchum and Richard Burton. That is until 2001 when mainstream TV (with the exception of becoming a ‘professional’ guest on just about every chat show going, and where, if the host loses the plot, he’ll ask himself questions) didn’t want his kind of literate and engaging shows any more. And as James made it clear on Thursday - after his documentary about Cuba was shelved by a 12 year old executive producer - it was the worst and the best thing that ever happened to him. He now hosts a chat show for Sky from his own living-room.

And you will see in this new and intimate chat show the irreverent wit and highly cultured base from which James has built his reputation over the last forty odd years; an irreverence and culture that was also the basis of his audience on Thursday, which dealt hilariously with everything from smoking, drinking, weight, sex and the balding man, a discourse on Australian culture, plus some wonderful readings from his new book, especially one about men’s fashions and the world of the 1970s…

” If, during the course of this volume, I refer to my mode of dress as if I looked outstanding, the reader should grasp in advance that standing out, in that period, was unusually hard to do. We all looked like that: or, at any rate, the younger men did. The Duke of Edinburgh never dressed to get attention. If he didn’t, why did we? It is a very hard thing to evoke an era. Pick up a notebook and a pen right now, stick your head outside the door, and command yourself to evoke your era. How, for example, would you capture your era’s atmosphere of squalid menace in public places? Where would you start? As the sixties slithered into the seventies, the streets were still almost incomparably safer than they are now, but the post-punk body-piercing hoodies of today look diffident, almost self-effacing, compared to the young males of that time. With few exceptions, we all looked more amazing than anything seen in Britain since the Restoration brought in horned wigs and stilt heels. You can’t really tell from photographs how universal the bizarrerie actually was, to the extent that nobody noticed because everybody was doing it…

” The fashion dictated long and thick sideboards to the hair, as if the head had been joined on each side by a small sofa deprived of its covering and tilted on end. There were velvet jackets, flared trousers, zip-sided boots. With the possible exception of the hair, all these elements entailed a lavish use of industrially generated materials, especially polyester. It meant that the average young male was carrying a greater proportion of artificial fabrics than an airliner’s interior…

” My own range of shirts included an electric blue number that made the unwary spectator’s eyes ache. As its proud owner, I thought it looked particularly good with a cravat. The cravats I favoured were of a chemically derived material printed with a paisley pattern…They sometimes delivered electric shocks when touched, but so did almost everything else I was wearing. When charged up by walking on the right kind of nylon carpet, I could be seen in the dark…”

Lovely stuff.

A good piece of advice Clive James gave on Thursday night is that would-be interviewers and chat show hosts must never ask a question of a guest and then answer it themselves, because, quite naturally, it leaves the interviewee nothing to say. Good basic advice that sadly - during the question and answer period toward the end of the evening - fell on the deaf ears of a well known local journalist who gave an embarrassing two minute answer to his own embarrassing five minute question. I shall read his next column with interest.

It was a super evening with some very thoughtful nonpcness that went to the humorous heart of things. I, along with my two old friends Lawrence and Byron, enjoyed it hugely.

Congratulations to Fiona, Claude, and the rest of the gang at the Civic Hall for getting Clive to Stratford.

If you want to see Clive’s new chat show from his own home click onto Clive James dot com.

Last night myself, Guy Winter, and Roy Cane, were meant to see Ian Harris’s new play Rhonna’s Tears, but we discovered on ordering a glass or two of wine the play had been cancelled due to a family death.

So, no play, but a lot of wine and talk about starting the first Stratford International Festival of Literature, and bridges, especially one to replace the 15th century Clopton Bridge which is in danger of falling into the Avon, hence Roy’s letter to the Stratford Council below - which is a damned good idea…

Bridges: A Greater Aspiration

Following two good conversations about bridges with representatives from the Local Authority, I am left with these thoughts. The scheme seems to be rather small beer, it fiddles with things. It has just as much potential to be really rather exciting as it has to become an utter mess.

Only two of the alternatives, The Boomerang and Twisted Thing (my descriptions) begin to excite me, but only just begin to.

The brief to not interfere with the skyline and silhouette of trees and Holy Trinity Church downgrade and strangle ambition and are the downfall of inspiration.

‘Iconic’ and ‘World Class’ are labels used. Nothing, or at best, very little of this scheme is either. The scheme becomes chaff, obscuring the view of the real ugly problem.

There should be a greater aspiration, a bigger ambition, to create something that inspires excitement and pride and a tremendous experience for Stratford and for visitors.

The real ugly problem is Clopton Bridge, or rather the traffic on Clopton Bridge. This beautiful bridge is a sad disgrace as an approach to Stratford. Remove traffic from Clopton Bridge, liberating it and the whole area by the Gower Memorial for grass, trees, seating, and walk ways, all for people to enjoy. With Clopton Bridge freed of traffic, there is then the capacity for a dedicated and safe pedestrian and cycle route for all: - People who live south of The River and visitors alike

My suggestion is this: - Be bold in vision.

Build a new bridge over the River Avon upstream of Clopton Bridge. This should be a Multi purpose Road Crossing with separated cycle lane and footpaths. A diagonal route from Warwick Road to The Alveston Manor junction would suffice.

The existing gyratory road becomes no through way to traffic but is two way working for businesses, parking, Leisure Centre and 999.

Purpose built traffic management for Tiddington Road and Swan’s Nest Lane can be provided.

At the Warwick Road end of the new bridge road there is ample space for some exciting projects which should exemplify various aspects of ‘greenness’.

Build low rise Car Parking for:-

Park and Ride: Park and Walk, Park and River Boat Ride and even Park and Horse Drawn Ride services and routes to the new and existing open areas.

Electric or Hybrid fuel Buses or Trams and Boats would be based there and operate from early morning until Chucking Out Time, whenever that might be these days.

Build this and associated road, path and track with terracing for planting and to slow down run off of rain water to the river.

The current scheme does not really solve any problems. If anything it imagines that cyclists want to cross the River downstream of the Theatre. I suggest building something that inspires, creates and solves problems as well.

This is an opportunity for a remarkable and exciting piece of engineering and design in its own right. A spectacular bridge, something people want to come to see, photograph, drive over, walk over, cycle over and navigate under. All of these things and more in its own right. A piece of theatre in design.

Roy Cane