Tag Archives: Cheek by Jowl

The Revenger’s Tragedy

★★★★★

Barbican

The Revenger’s Tragedy

The Revenger’s Tragedy (La tragedia del vendicatore)

Barbican

Reviewed – 4th March 2020

★★★★★

 

“The partnership between Cheek by Jowl and Piccolo creates an energetic work of the most satisfying and unforgettable kind”

 

We enter the theatre to an open stage paradoxically shut tight by a wooden barrier, stretching end to end. Whatever is about to happen must be barred from view until the time is right. It’s a blockade both stark and titilating—an arresting alternative to the traditional curtain, and—like a wall surrounding a citadel under attack—a hint of bloody conflict to come. We are about to encounter the grand guignol world of Jacobean tragedy.

The empty space distinguished by one, bold item of physical design is, of course, a hallmark of set designer Nick Ormerod, founder member of Cheek by Jowl, just as the bold, flamboyant acting style that is to follow, is equally the hallmark of director Declan Donnellan, the other founder of the company. In recent years, Donnellan and Ormerod have worked with a number of other world famous companies—and for this production of The Revenger’s Tragedy, now assigned to the authorship of Thomas Middleton—Cheek by Jowl has signed up with the Piccolo Theatre of Milan, a company equally well known for its reinterpretation of the classics. It’s a genius collaboration.

As the play begins, the company, dressed in modern suits and dresses, dance on stage. This is a stylised line up—the actors free to create their own signature movements—as the protagonist, Vindice (Fausto Cabra), introduces them. He swiftly paints for us a picture of a Renaissance court steeped in the most lurid vices known to men. We discover that Vindice (whose name means vengeance) has a particular reason to know each character, and their vices, well. Starting at the top, with the lustful, amoral old Duke, who has murdered Vindice’s fiancée for rejecting his advances, Vindice plans an elaborate poison and blood soaked revenge on the whole pack of them. This court is a crazy, upside down world where sons betray their mothers, mothers pimp their daughters, bastards commit incest, and Vindice, by no means immune from craziness himself, employs the skull of his dead lover Gloriana to ensnare the Duke. So that makes it a win for necrophilia as well.

Ormerod’s set design reveals this world in a series of sliding panels in his wall. At any point in the drama, we may see stained glass windows in a sunlit cathedral peeking through. At other moments, backdrops are revealed featuring enlarged Renaissance portraits, whose coolly beautiful subjects either gaze quizzically on all the nastiness unfolding on stage, or, if in groups, are deep in intricate plottings of their own. The backdrops are the light illuminating the murkiness going on downstage, where the characters more often than not, are peering around edges, or donning dark disguises. The lighting collaboration between Judith Greenwood (Cheek by Jowl) and Claudio de Pace (Piccolo) manages these carefully delineated spaces adroitly, and the final view of the stage—with Ormerod’s wall back in place—is a memorable view of the word “vendetta” bathed in appropriately blood red lighting.

Amidst all the jewels of this production, and in the spotlight from beginning to end, are Donnellan’s directing, and Piccolo’s acting. From the dance of future death that opens the show, Donnellan uses physical movement to great effect to show the characters’ intentions. This is particularly necessary in a production where the spoken words are in Italian, and the only English is abridged to short, single lines in a translator above the stage. (Though these lines are well chosen and designed to be picked up by the eye in a single glance.) Donnellan is well served by his actors, with particularly strong performances from Fausto Cabra, and Massimiliano Speziani as the reprobate Duke. The Duke’s equally corrupt sons, played by Ivan Alovisio, Flavio Capuzzo Dolcetta, Christian Di Filippo, David Meden, and Errico Liguori, arrange and rearrange themselves in and around each other in a world of constantly shifting alliances, interspersed by acts of lurid physical violence. It gets so gruesome by the end that the audience can only laugh. Special mention should also be made of the work of Pia Lanciotti who does a brilliant doubling of the faithless Duchess, and Vindice’s mother Gratiana.

This production of The Revenger’s Tragedy is designed to stretch one’s experience of the theatre. It is not for the squeamish. But then, some of the best experiences require a willingness to suspend one’s own expectations. The partnership between Cheek by Jowl and Piccolo creates an energetic work of the most satisfying and unforgettable kind.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Masiar Pasquali

 


The Revenger’s Tragedy

Barbican until 7th March

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Knight Of The Burning Pestle | ★★★★ | June 2019
Peeping Tom: Child (Kind) | ★★★ | January 2020

 

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The Night of the Burning Pestle
★★★★

Barbican

The Night of the Burning Pestle

The Night of the Burning Pestle

Barbican

Reviewed – 5th June 2019

★★★★

 

“Nick Ormerod has done a fair bit to bring the production to a modern audience, but the plot and original satire still stand”

 

There’s that idea of theatre, that people who don’t go to the theatre think of when they think of theatre – in short, it’s pretentious, abstract and incomprehensible. Or it’s Shakespeare, but, like, one of the ones no-one knows. And in truth, even to the seasoned theatre goer, facing such an evening can be equally nightmarish.

Cheek By Jowl’s ‘The Knight of the Burning Pestle’ begins with such a nightmare: the set (Nick Ormerod) consists solely of a white monolith centre-stage, from behind which the cast, dressed entirely in monochrome (Bilan Valentina), slowly emerges, to the long, monotone burr of a cello (Pavel Akimkin).

A man’s bust (Kirill Sbitnev), projected on to the monolith, begins a booming monologue in opaque seventeenth century language as the cast moves abstractly around the stage. The first scene is more of the same – you just about get the gist, but, being in Russian it grows quickly tiresome having to crane your head to read the surtitles and untangle the meaning, and occasionally flick a glance down to see what’s actually happening on stage. Five minutes in, however, we’re interrupted by a man in his fifties from the second row (Alexander Feklistov) and his wife (Agrippina Steklova) who clamber on stage, to report that they don’t understand what’s happening, that maybe the audience would prefer a different kind of story. The two decide that instead there should be a story about a knight! Who kills a lion! With a Pestle! And they have just the man for the job- their man-child nephew Rafe (Nazar Safonov), also sitting in the audience who eagerly runs to join them. Thereafter continues a strange hostage situation, where the cast are trying desperately to continue on with their play whilst incorporating Rafe’s knight, and placating this eccentric- and very vocal couple who have decided to sit on stage for the rest of the performance.

Having been written in 1607, director Nick Ormerod has done a fair bit to bring the production to a modern audience, but the plot and original satire still stand, and it’s as relevant now as it ever it was. Rafe’s ridiculous ‘knight’s adventure’ storyline along with his hobby horse ‘steed’ and the big orchestral music accompanying him, in contrast to the drab, solemnity of the ‘real’ play, reminds us that sometimes all we want is a big adventure, a happy ending and a song and dance. And that’s exactly what we get – dance and all (as choreographed by Irina Kashuba).

Whilst it seems much of the translation is condensed so as to avoid missing the action on stage, the absurd comedy of it all still comes across. A seventeenth century love triangle, a medieval knight’s adventure, and a pushy old Russian couple may seem an unlikely combination, but it’s a winning one, and a must-see.

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Johan Persson

 


The Night of the Burning Pestle

Barbican until 8th June

 

Last ten shows covered by this reviewer:
Oranges & Ink | ★★ | Tristan Bates Theatre | March 2019
Bed Peace: The Battle Of Yohn & Joko | ★★★ | Cockpit Theatre | April 2019
Neck Or Nothing | ★★★★ | Pleasance Theatre | April 2019
Safety Net | ★½ | Etcetera Theatre | April 2019
The Simon & Garfunkel Story | ★★★ | Lyric Theatre | April 2019
William Andrews: Willy | ★★★★★ | Soho Theatre | April 2019
Country Music | ★★★★ | Omnibus Theatre | May 2019
Hotter | ★★★★★ | Soho Theatre | May 2019
Operation Mincemeat | ★★★★★ | New Diorama Theatre | May 2019
The Millennials | ★★½ | Pleasance Theatre | May 2019

 

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