Fintan O'Toole reviews Henry IV Part One at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin, Gerry Colgan reviews One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the Andrews Lane Theatre in Dublin and Mary Leland reviews The Gondoliers in the Cork Opera House.
Henry IV Part One
Peacock Theatre
Fintan O'Toole
Off all Shakespeare's history plays, the first part of Henry IV is perhaps the most vivid. Unlike, say Richard II or Richard III, where the title tells you the identity of the principal character, it is not really about Henry IV. The king here is not so much a character as a formal expression of power. His personal limelight is stolen by others: the dashing rebel Hotspur, the dilettante Prince of Wales, the great rogue Falstaff. In a kind of dramatic democracy, even the lowly inn-keeper Mistress Quickly is allowed as much personal vitality as the monarch.
This makes the play a crucible of Shakespeare's mature genius. We see here the boldness that will make his work so profound: the willingness to let dramatic roles make their own importance, even if it contradicts the accepted hierarchy of power.
Part of this boldness is linguistic. This is an experimental piece in which Shakespeare uses prose dialogue - the medium of the common man - far more than ever before. Even the poetry, especially that of the self-consciously plain-speaking Hotspur, is lean, direct, deliberately anti-poetical. When we get the formal rhetoric of the court it is usually in the form of parody, as Falstaff and Prince Hal engage in a continual burlesque of proper princely speech.
There are thus two basic challenges for a contemporary production. One is to give a shape to a play that deliberately lacks a single dramatic centre. As the action shifts back and forth between three distinct worlds - the court, the tavern and the conspiratorial gatherings of the rebels - how do you make it cohere? The other challenge is to cope with the breadth of voices the play's bold use of language demands.
In dealing with the first problem at the Peacock, director Jimmy Fay has called in the playwright Mark O'Rowe to edit the text. Between them, they have given the play a cinematic rhythm. The scenes are tightened and intercut with a rapidity that creates an impressive narrative sweep. Apart from an unnecessary and oddly placed interval, there is a relentless drive that keeps the story moving forward.
Some of the cutting, though, affects Shakespeare's essential intention of giving us a large range of diverse human types. The first scene of the third act, for example, gives us the humanity of the rebels though the elaborate business of Mortimer's inability to understand his wife, who speaks only Welsh and through Hotspur's teasing of Mortimer.
Most of this is simply cut, so that Mortimer ceases to be a real presence in the play, the image of Wales as a foreign culture is lost, and Hotspur's softer side is diminished.
More generally, the relentless determination to keep the story moving along discourages Fay's interest in comic invention. Since one of the great assets of the production is Sean Kearns's stately Falstaff, this is a real pity. The one time Fay indulges us with a bit of comic business - in the row over Falstaff's ring in Act 3 - he makes splendid use of the time he must have spent watching Blackadder.
The handling of the language is similarly equivocal. Fay's approach is brave and subtle. Nick Dunning's King Henry is a fine, traditional RADA-esque exercise in classical acting. Fay's bravery lies in the decision to emphasise the king's formal isolation by allowing almost everyone else to use regional or local accents. Kearns gives Falstaff the sonorous but seductive tones of the Irish borderlands. Declan Conlon's Hotspur uses a brilliantly judged combination of an Irish accent and a haughty, imperious tone. Karl Shiels's Poins is a Dublin wideboy. This works well up to a point, but there are problems. As the king's son, Tom Murphy's Prince Hal has to speak like his father, and Murphy seems constrained by the need to adopt an alien tone. The playfulness of much of the dialogue between himself and Kearns is lost because the attempt at naturalness gets in the way of their deliberate parodies of formal speech. David Pearse's superb comic timing as Glendower is undermined by his need to speak in a Taffy accent which is, in any case, made nonsensical by Glendower's own declaration that he learned his English at the court.
What we end up with is a robust if not terribly profound account of the play, with some of best sword fights seen on an Irish stage and a forcefully exciting narrative. In Kearns's terrific Falstaff and Conlon's confident Hotspur, though, there is evidence of how much further Irish actors can take Shakespeare if they are given the chance. (Until Jan 11)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Andrews Lane
Gerry Colgan
This adaptation by Dale Wasserman of Ken Kesey's novel has all the ingredients of an entertaining stage drama: solid plot structure, colourful and convincing characters and the ability to engage the audience. On the way home, one might begin to question its basic credibility and certain contrivances - but by then it is happily too late to renege on the evening's enjoyment. The illusion has prevailed.
Randle P. McMurphy, as an alternative to prison labour, agrees to being committed to a psychiatric institution that may in theory enable him to modify his anti-social behaviour. There is nothing wrong with him other than an iconoclastic streak, a free spirit at odds with a world of convention. His new home brings him into contact with inmates who have already been defeated by life, and for whom the mental hospital is finishing the job. He incites them to fight back, and incurs the hostility of Nurse Ratched.
Many of the scenes featuring oddities of thought and behaviour among the mentally unstable prisoners are quite disgracefully funny, but always in a sympathetic way; we laugh with them. As McMurphy's derision inflames Ratched, we become uneasily aware of her power over him, her influence in matters of electro-therapy and lobotomy. The play ends in a mixture of tragedy and a victory for the human spirit.
It is very well written, and is given vitality by a cast of excellent actors. Joe Hanley's McMurphy is the best thing this actor has done, a bravura characterisation that draws occasional cheers from the audience. Liz Schwarz brings a sinister touch to her smiling Nurse. Others to shine are Paul Bennett's senior inmate, Liam O'Brien's unfortunate youth and Titos Menchaca as a giant Indian. Terry Byrne directs this melodrama with a true feel for its pace and dramatic peaks. A good one. (Until end Jan)
The Gondoliers
Cork Opera House
Mary Leland
Queen Victoria was amused, and this expert Carl Rosa Opera production of The Gondoliers makes it easy to understand why. The social irony underlying many of Gilbert's lyrics and tilted at by Sullivan's music is not disguised by the fluff and busy-ness of so much of the action, although director Jamie Hayes comes uncomfortably close to blurring the distinctions between satire and farce in his handling of some of the farcical elements of the plot. But where would comic opera be without the nurse and nurselings? Here again are untimely lovers, unlikely confusions, indigent nobility and commanding chancellors; the difference for The Gondoliers is the mainly Venetian setting and the consequent Italiante inflection of so much of the music.
Conductor Richard Balcombe sustains the thematic flow with an ease which, thankfully, has to be called practised, even when it is decided to give the first verse or two of Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes from a deck-chair. Declan Kelly's Marco manages this very well and although some of the principal singing is a little disappointing there is no mistaking the quality and confidence of Maeve Kelly's Casilda and Daniel Hoadley's Luiz. It is all colourful and delightfully tuneful fun, pleasurable in its very predictability and fluid with the ease of long practice and hard work. The major sets painted by Eugenie Neilson for designer Peter Molloy are triumphs of perspective in the high Victorian style. (Until Nov 30)
