Hamlet - A Little Review

Hello Internet!


this is a little fleeting 'Hello' (I'm currently knee deep in script learning and all things Badapple Theatre...but its all grand! be sure to check it out http://www.badappletheatre.com/ - OK Shameless plug over) and well over due review of an AMAZING production of Hamlet i went to see last week...


i went to see...


Hamlet: at the Lowery Manchester on the 12th February 2011

Rory Kinnear in Hamlet at the National Theatre. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

So The Sween (for those new readers here today - firstly HELLO and secondly The Sween is my boyfriend) took me to see this production as a Valentines present....


Note:
i asked The Sween to give me a one line review this morning, and i quote - "that Rory lad was so good i didn't get board once watching it for three and half hours"...that's my boy!


...it was an amazing large scale piece of theatre, which i must admit i don't get to see that often (mostly due to my passion for new writing and excitement and support for smaller scale theatre companies) and i had forgotten how amazing a cast of 27 can look on stage.


The Sound scape is utterly brilliant and consuming, it has such an impact without over powering the action. The two (sound and action) bubble together compounding every scene. The blast of dance music at the end of the first half left me saying ' forget the bloody interval, lets carry on!' ...


The piece is very much a Hamlet of our time, the opening of the play sees the new king giving a Televised speech, sat with his equally new queen at his side. The whole situation has a very grand excessive feel to it, like a family that are keeping up appearances . The presence of camera crews, and invasive press are present from the start to the finish, you get the feeling of claustrophobia and lack of privacy constantly....there is always someone watching, someone listening... waiting to stitch you up!


i particularly liked the scene in which Hamlet and Ophelia are talking/ arguing (Act 3: Scene 1) and in giving him a book the quick thinking almost super brained Hamlet begins talking into the book (Mad? you might think so!) and in an aggressive flurry opens it to reveal their conversation has been buged. He is betrayed by the people he trusts. This whole scene just adds fuel to the burning fire of the audiences alliance to Hamlet.


The Shadows of the stage were continually relevant, people in stillness, ghosts appearing, strangers seemingly approaching. The themes of shadows and self from the text were mirrored so beautifully within the subtlety of lighting... this production has been so carefully thought out...this review could be sort of never ending really....but alas its not don't worry!


Other bits i liked (basically rounding it up..as i have to get ready, I'm of to see Storm in a Teacup by Horse and Bamboo Theatre Company with my dad www.horseandbamboo.org )

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were brilliantly funny and made a grand double act as they continually tried to penetrate Hamlets bubble of madness...

i loved David Calder's large framed Polonius, laterally doubled over with laughter as he delivered cracking muddled wording with lyrical ease....

Ophelia's flower speech was kooky and excited as she wheeled in with a discarded shopping trolley, handing people presents instead of flowers...

Overall this was one of the most exciting pieces of theatre i have seen in such along time...and as for Rory Kinnear...well i just love him!
Here is the link for the production:
 http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/59866/productions/hamlet-olivier-2010.html


this link is full of grand info, cast, dates, 'Real' reviews and much more ....go and see it! its mint!

Peace Out

Sam
x

'Back to the Land Girls' by Badapple Theatre Company

Its not the Bard but.....

Biddy (Abi Uttly) and Buff (Me)

Back to the Land Girls 2011

Out on tour in March 2011 Badapple reprise their touring production 'Back to the Land Girls'.
This brand new show is the latest comedy two-hander from Badapple's resident writer as she celebrates the highs and lows of the wonderful women who helped keep Britain fed during World War II, set against a backdrop of glorious music of the age, as well as new tunes by songwriter Jez Lowe. Although a fictional tale this play owes much to the reminiscences of a number of Land Army Girls who contributed their own personal stories to this exciting new comedy.

A new comedy.Written and directed by Kate Bramley (ex-Hull Truck Theatre) Original music by Jez Lowe (Radio 2 SONY ACADEMY AWARD winner)

'Some girls just aren't cut out for farming...'

It's 1942, and there are some new arrivals in the village. They're turning heads and breaking hearts as the ine girls of the Women's Land Army take to the hills.Buff is a city girl dreaming of being 'just like Vera Lynn', while Biddy is a country girl who is 'now't but a hopeless romantic'. Join them on a journey of blisters, back-ache and banter as they learn all there is to know about working on the land.

come and see us performing all around the country through March and April, for more information visit http://www.badappletheatre.com/productions

Romeo and Juliet finished and Love Love Loved....P.S You kiss by the book.

Hello Internet!


I hope you are all well where ever you may be....i have finished Romeo and Juliet (after much savoring i must admit....is it my favourite? potentially YES indeed!) and as per usual i am going to shpeel out my random understandings and thoughts.....with no doubt ample quantities of irrelevant comments of course!


The Prologue


Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.


My oh my the Bard was a cleaver so and so! this Prologue rips down the 4th wall and tells the audience before the play has even started - THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS, PEOPLE DIE...OH AND BY THE WAY DON'T GET CARRIED AWAY THIS IS JUST 'TRAFIC' ON OUR STAGE...With Romeo and Juliet being such a well known tale (bare with me here this could and probably is contradictory to the previous sentence) i read it with emotional predictability, i indulge in the sad bits and boy am i ready for them, but in the first showings of the play the audience didn't have that ....and so the Prologue's importance and I'm sure success is completely thought out...Bravo!


is Romeo an Emo?


Romeo is so emotional and an archetypal 'Teenager' with his moody, sullen manner ...in my minds eye i can see him with a black swishy fringe, baggy jeans and an ipod blasting 'Paramore', a little like my friend Adam from work...


Note: this is Adam he love Paramour and has a swishy fringe

Adam

Paramore

it might be worth mentioning that although he looks like an 'Emo' (feel awful really, using pop culture stereotyping...its a little unfair to group people isn't it? anyway please forgive me on this one as I'm just trying to make a point.) he is daft as a brush and doesn't take his self to seriously.


So....back to Romeo! sometimes i just want to give him a bit of a shake, particularly at the start of the play when he is chatting to the lovely Benvolio his cousin, its like trying to get blood out of a stone...the first time we meet him we get the impression he is a bit of a wet weekend:


Act1: Scene 1


BENVOLIO :Good-morrow, cousin.
ROMEO :Is the day so young?
BENVOLIO :But new struck nine.
ROMEO :Ay me! sad hours seem long.
                Was that my father that went hence so fast?
BENVOLIO :It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
ROMEO :Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
BENVOLIO :In love?
ROMEO :Out--
BENVOLIO :Of love?
ROMEO :Out of her favour, where I am in love.
BENVOLIO :Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
                     Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!


... I wonder whether The Bard does this to show the contrast between his behavior when he meet his love Juliet and the light that fills him up from the dark of the previous scenes?


Off the Point Sam thought: the play is constantly tooing and frowning from light to dark with very little grey areas, one minuet its incredible happiness and the next tragedy...it makes for such an exciting read even though i know the story. What is anything or anyone with a bit of contrast?


Romeo is so changeable i get the impression that his friends and family are used to the whirled wind of his affections whipping different woman up and in that become consumed by them...when we first see him visit the Friar Laurence (Act 2:scene3), the Friar * is still in the understanding that its Rosaline he is crazy over. After all how can he be so flippant with his love? i wonder if Romeo is the boy who cried Love...how many times has he fallen in love like this? the previous times weren't real but only he (Romeo) knows that.


*Friar Laurence: Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? young men's love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste!


My Favourite Bit


is in Act 1: Scene 3 the Nurses speech about Juliet as a child:


Nurse :Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she--God rest all Christian souls!--
Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me: but, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was wean'd,--I never shall forget it,--
Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;
My lord and you were then at Mantua:--
Nay, I do bear a brain:--but, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!
Shake quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge:
And since that time it is eleven years;
For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before, she broke her brow:
And then my husband--God be with his soul!
A' was a merry man--took up the child:
'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
Wilt thou not, Jule?' and, by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying and said 'Ay.'
To see, now, how a jest shall come about!
I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,
I never should forget it: 'Wilt thou not, Jule?' quoth he;
And, pretty fool, it stinted and said 'Ay.'
LADY CAPULET :Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace.
Nurse :Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh,
To think it should leave crying and say 'Ay.'
And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow
A bump as big as a young cockerel's stone;
A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly:
'Yea,' quoth my husband,'fall'st upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;
Wilt thou not, Jule?' it stinted and said 'Ay.'


i just love this! The Nurse is such a fantastic character and so comical...the whole tale she tells is a little embarrassing for Juliet (as she reminds her of an incident when once she fell backwards and the Nurses husband said when you grow up you will fall back and enjoy it *wink wink* and the little Innocent Juliet say 'Ay') and the scene makes for real comedy when Lady Capulet gets a little tired of the Nurses ramblings, but she carries on anyway! It helps us as an audience see into the past of the Capulet's, and adds real weight to the tragedy....the Nurse has been like a mother to Juliet from the day she was born. This makes for two childless woman at the end of the play.
Note to self:Add the Nurse to parts i have to play before i kick the bucket!

Theme- Stars

Is it really any wonder people cash in on the Internet selling stars for people to buy for their loved ones? I wont lie it has crossed my mind before to maybe purchase one as a quirky present for The Sween but i always think....how on earth can you sell a star? i mean it isn't any ones to sell... Romeo and Juliet is full of stars, beautiful lines about the unknown lights in the sky (great to put in valentines cards people! so i shall pop them below)


Act1:Scene3
Capulet: Earth treading stars, that make dark heaven light
Act2:Scene1
Romeo:Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return
Act 3:Scene2
Juliet:Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.


Queen Mab


Mercutio has such a way with words, he is like the coolest kid at school...he radiates off the page this hedonistic, mischievous manner which pulls me in. When i read the Queen Mab speech i had to re-read it, there is so much! I really liked this bit in Baz Luhrmanns film (flash back to Sam aged 11 who wore out her VHS copy of the film from complete over watching...don't judge her! she was a child with a Dicaprio obsession and a tendency to be a little over dramatic...*Not to self don't talk about self in third person!*) Harold Perrineau makes this speech his own....

The big WHAT IF?

What If? (What) (If) ...its so prolific in this play, i asked it in almost every scene and it got me to thinking about fate, destiny and how huge a What If can hang over your head...

What If the Friar went with his instincts? his speech in Act 2: Scene 6 is so foreseeing, he knows what will happen to this young pair of lovers:

Friar Laurence: These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

why he so naive to think that all this messing about with potions and faking death was the answer? As a grown man he should have had more bloody sense, surly?

...Obviously with out these missjudgements there would be no play, but in relation to our lives i think this play written so many years ago has something very relevant to say... don't be swept away by emotion, Love and Love well, but don't be at the mercy of What Ifs... This is our time, our lives ...lets live it! ... (Pause for comment on cheesy 'Sam' motivational shpeel!...Sorry)

Poor Juliet is full of them in her speech in Act 4: Scene 3

Juliet:Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I'll call them back again to comfort me:
Nurse! What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there.
Laying down her dagger
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,--
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;--
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:--
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefather's joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

What if these two families could have sorted their troubles out before the lives of Romeo and Juliet where wasted? War never really makes sense and is almost always regretted... in my opinion nothing good can come from it! Someone throw the dictators, rulers and trouble makers of our world a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare with a post-it where Romeo and Juliet begins ...

For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

wow! i really have gone on a little today.... forgive me but Romeo and Juliet really got my thoughts going and its been an amazing read! If you haven't read it you should, its so fantastic and you cant appreciate its beauty by just watching the film...even though the film is brill and full of beautiful people...

Happy Valentines Day

Peace Out

Sam
x 

Romeo and Juliet at the Octagon Theatre Bolton - A Little Review

Romeo and Juliet  at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton 3rd Feb - 5th March

David Ricardo-Pearce (Romeo) and Jade Anouka (Juliet) in Romeo and Juliet at the Octagon, Bolton

Photo by Ian Tilton

I went to see this productions of Romeo and Juliet on Monday (7th Feb 2011) having been quiet excited about it for some time...even though i was almost late, having been served by a waitress at Pizza Express that could only have been described a glacial (God Bless her! some people just don't have any 'GO' in them, do they?) we arrived at the theatre and got sat down just in time!


The play opens and the set is incredibly minimal, smoke and shadows fill the space with a shiny flooring that looks oily and hot. Romeo and Juliet present the Prologue and then we're off! The pace never falls and the actors charge the space with in an inch of its life... The show is in the round and on many occasions the characters address the audience (i felt completely in the action....would i be a Capulet or a Montague?), in the Balcony scene - Act 2: Scene 1 Romeo asked me and my friends:


Romeo: 'Shall i hear more, or shall i speak'


I wanted to say 'Yes! go get her fella' ...but i didn't.


The party scene starts with a school party kind of feel but soon merges into a rock out with electric guitars and a whole lot of dancing ...again a moment at which your legs itch and twitch to join in! The choice of 'crazy' spectacles instead of masks was a bit 'out there' but i went with it and particularly enjoyed Lady Capulets choice of eye wear ( a bit Dame Edna Everage!)...


The play continues to pick up pace and hurtle along as Romeo and Juliet fall fatally in love... David Ricardo-Pearce (Romeo) and Jade Anouka (Juliet) are so compelling to watch as a couple. The sparks fly from every word they speak to each other. I really warmed to Juliet's giddiness and loved all her speeches at the Balcony, for a black mental structure she didn't half make it look like home! the passion steamed right through the 'Marrage' scene to the point were i wasn't quiet sure if it had happened!


As the direction starts to change and tragedy sits in the theatre space there are so many brilliant things to say about all the cast, Kieran Hill's Mercutio swigs at beers and delivers the Queen Mab speech ( My Fav of Mercutios!) with a cock like swagger....when he meets his fatal end it feels like he is stole away from us to quickly, but i suppose its good to be let wanting more?


I was moved by Lady Capulet through out, her peacefulness and refined behaviour was so interesting and her heart ache incredibly real. Partnered with Capulet, what a force? He dominated in a charismatic lion type manner, Regal but feared. In the scene where he tells Juliet she has to marry Paris i felt truly scared for her at the hands of a man at the cusp of a dangerous temper!


This is fantastic production and completely engaging and not at all boring, it breaks a few preconceptions too (who could of imaged a Nurse like Michelle Colin's Gucci Shopping, high waisted trouser wearing Lady?) So please go and see it i you get the chance...supporting regional theatre is as important as brushing your teeth!


thank you for reading my 'Review' ...well really just my thoughts shoveled onto this blog..


peace out


Sam

x

the 'Real' review in the Stage: http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/31190/romeo-and-juliet


Production Details:
Romeo and Juliet
By:William Shakespeare

Cast: Jade Anouka, Tobias Beer, John Branwell, Michelle Collins, Colin Connor, Rob Edwards, Lloyd Gorman, Kieran Hill, Paula Jennings, Jake Norton, David Ricardo-Pearce, Simeon Truby

Director:David Thacker

Design:Ruari Murchison

Sound:Andy Smith

Lighting:Ciaran Bagnall

http://www.octagonbolton.co.uk/page/145/Romeo+and+Juliet/93#-Info

Love, Photographs and Sonnets

Hello!

I have just been sat in a traffic jam coming home from the land of Manchester ( i have singing lessons with the most amazing teacher! today we sang Spring Awakening, Oliver, Cabaret and Kelly Clarkson....totally pointless information....promise i wont make a habit of it!) and whilst sat grid locked with all the grumpy motorists i got to thinking about Romeo and Juliet, more specifically LOVE. Please forgive the heightened cheesiness of this blog entry....and of course ...Enjoy!

Here are some photos of LOVE LOVE LOVE from my life.....

Romeo

You may remember i mentioned The Sween in my last blog? Well this is him, my Romeo (pause for geek related comment....probably from The Sween), This photo was taken by me on holiday last summer in Lanzarote....We met at Morrison's when we were whipper snappers, i worked on the cheese counter and Dave/Sween worked on the shop floor.....miles away from the drama of Romeo and Juliet.... however Dave did rescue an old lady from a falling pyramid of Diet Coke once. Ours was a LOVE made over moderately priced cheese and Morrison's in house Radio.

My mum and Dad

This was taken on a budget cruise to Norway .... it was a rocky journey, mum is scared of boats, mum notified the whole boat she had seen a whale when in fact she had only seen some floating seaweed being jolted around by the waves....they laughed a lot.

Their Wedding Day

Grandma and Grandad

Unconventional Love Story: Dedicated to each other completely they spent all there time together, grandad liked taking electrics apart and putting them back together and Grandma like to pretend she wasn't working class. When Grandma had to have all her teeth taken out Grandad decided (as not to make Grandma feel ugly and on her own) to have his perfectly healthy teeth removed!

Nikki and Luke - Romeo and Juliet

Nikki and Luke were two friends of mine that tragically lost their lives...but they loved each other so much, i feel they deserve a mention when LOVE is the theme.

Becks and Chris

Best Friends of mine....they live a happy life together and have a pet Rabbit called Poppy.

Mel and Tomo

This is my best friend Mel and her fiancee Tomo (i am maid on honer...very exciting!)...they met in Magaluf both on stag and hen do's...Destined to be married i say!

Now i had intended on interspersing lovely extracts from the first ten sonnets i have read this week but it turns out the first ten are all about moving on, growing up, getting married and having babies... so i have decided to use quick fire revues of each one.

Sonnets

1. Themes of Reincarnation and beauty

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
    To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee

2. Ageing and Passing out of this world...lovely verse about wrinkled:

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

3. Death, Loneliness and the prospect of being a spinster.

But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
    Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
4. Spending, selfishness and debt ....the Bard wrote sonnets about Bank Managers?

5.

6. Departing and leaving nothing

7.

8. Love those who want to be love...love is not to be wasted.

9. Being single is bad....I can feel a message/ pattern emerging  here Bard!

10. Find love in your self


So..... that's all for tonight's instalment folks!  thanks for reading and your support...i am of to gorge on Pic n Mix sweets and watch Wuthering Heights (staring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley) as i got it on sale at Sainsburys...

Take Care

Readings Cool!

Peace out

Sam



xxx