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  • Writer's pictureWhat We've Watched
    • Jun 9, 2020
    • 11 min read

National Theatre at Home 3

Hey all!


Long-time no blog. Sorry about that. I had some computer problems, and after writing my mental health piece I started to feel a bit less than great. I’m still not great now but I’m better.


What have we been up to then? Well, we’ve both been watching theatre, last night we watched Shakespeare’s Globes Macbeth, I love Macbeth, it’s pretty good, give it a watch. Mum has been working hard recording lectures, marking, and having meetings. I started an online psychology course which I am loving, I’ve been reading a lot, I’ve started painting, and I’ve also been crying at the news.

 

Some things to address before we get started.


A lot of the theatre I have been exposed to has not been very diverse, both in casting and subject. I want to change this. Also, with what is going on in the world right now I want to say this:


When I was younger there was one BIPOC in my school. Almost all of my teaching staff throughout the entirety of my education have been white. When I got to Birmingham in 2015, I was surrounded by the diversity I had not seen in Guildford, and it was a wake-up call. It was a wake-up call because I had lived a sheltered life, everything around me had been white; skinned, orientated, and led. I have made mistakes in the past, been called out, educated and made changes. I am striving to keep educating myself, to address the inbuilt prejudice that is embedded in the white psyche. I am learning the history that was denied to me at school, information I had no idea about. I am reading books I should have picked up years ago. I am trying to have conversations with my family. I know I have barely scratched the surface. I am trying to educate myself, so I can support and raise up those around me. I know that I cannot fully understand, but I hear you and I support you. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs calls Physiological needs, like food, water, shelter, and Safety needs – security and freedom from fear, the basic needs for any individual. Every single individual has a basic human need and right to safety, to life. Black Lives Matter and we all need to call out the injustice and prejudice rife in the society we live in. We all must to do the work. Use our voices, donate, educate. (I will not be reviewing anything I chose to watch to educate myself, as I am not watching it for that purpose, I want to be as open to learning as possible).


Secondly, the arts don’t get a huge amount of funding as it is, and this global lockdown means lots of theatres and companies are struggling at the moment. This industry is fantastic and fuels us all, we must protect it! Many venues are accepting donations from the public, and I would encourage you to donate if you can. I will link to the theatres and companies mentioned in this post at the end along with the cast and creative lists, as always.

 

I am feeling super out of practice with writing a blog post, but I’m excited to get going again and I have ideas! To start us back up again what better than our third NT at Home instalment. This time it’s Barber Shop Chronicles, A Streetcar Named Desire, This House and Coriolanus. All wonderful and all different.


Here we go then, some little reviews of some massive shows. Mum has taken the lead on this post and italic Ellie is going to chime in. We love italic Ellie. Take it away Mum!

 

Barber Shop Chronicles, NT in collaboration with Fuel and Leeds Playhouse (filmed at NT in January 2018 and streamed on 14th May 2020)


One day; six cities; a thousand stories.


Well, we all know that females use their hairdressers as confidants, discussing their innermost secrets, worries and concerns. African men, we learn, use their barber shops in a similar way, albeit here their discussions are about the news, politics and what they’ve done wrong. The football is always playing as well and forms a point of debate and a distraction from the preening.


This play takes us on a world tour of African barbers across a single day. We hear stories about those in each place, and as the play progresses, we come to understand that the stories are intertwined. The writing is skilful; we come to know the clients and their characters, frustrations, worries and aspirations. The writing is INCREDIBLE, I recently read The Half-God of Rainfall (also by Inua Ellams) which I read the entirety of in about an hour, I couldn’t put it down. The script with its twists and turns, its linking between scenes and characters – as simple as the same joke being told over and over or sayings or mentions of family, was enthralling. The emotion which turned on a sixpence felt so real. This play is beautifully written and so, so engaging. The staging, entirely in the round, moves seamlessly from one destination to another through dance, music and song, each time culminating in the next setting with the minimum of set. The set effectively comprises little more than the barber’s chair with different people around it. The set was pretty immersive with signage and seating right in the front row of the audience. The scene changes/transitions were beautifully choreographed and so slick. Wheelie chair and cloak choreography was amazing. Scenes melted into the next seamlessly, with minimal changes really, different barber chairs and the props around them (which were minimal anyway), showed the difference in place and affluence. It was an easy and effective choice. Actors take different roles and do so to the point where you find yourself thinking – that’s him isn’t it – again with minimal change in costume – perhaps the addition of a hat and little more. This ensemble was AMAZING, every single one of these actors was brilliant and together they brought this wonderful script to life.


Whilst the subject matter was not immediately my ‘cup of tea’, this was a compelling piece of theatre. It was cleverly written and directed, resulting in an engaging and thought-provoking couple of hours. I was honesty obsessed, overwhelmed and enthralled by this production, I watched it multiple times before it was removed from YouTube. It was brilliant. Some of the best ensemble work I've seen, and such a wonderful script. Loved it! LOVED IT

 

A Streetcar Named Desire, a Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production (first produced in 2014, streamed on 21st May 2020)


Well I got that one wrong. I’d not read or seen this before, and for some reason thought it was jolly. Far from it – this is the story of Blanche (Gillian Anderson) as she descends deeper and deeper into depression to the point of being sectioned. She seeks help from her sister and arrives (on the Streetcar named Desire) to stay with her – but staying becomes an indeterminant length of time, in a very small space. Her decline is hastened by her sister’s brutal husband, who seems to have married the sister because of the land the family owned, but this has been lost, fuelling the husbands’ resentment of Blanche and subsequent behaviour towards her. Having said that, male treatment of women throughout the play is, for the most part, despicable. He seeks out information about Blanche’s past life, exposing a multitude of lies, or perhaps delusions, or even truths.

The play, in the round, is set entirely in the sister’s flat and the immediate area around it. The set does, however, rotate to give the audience different views as the play progresses. Okay, so I thought that the revolve might have something to do with Blanches mental state, it wasn’t spinning until she arrived there, and it also seemed to spin faster in symmetry to her more heightened emotion. Her downward spiral. If this was the case, then this is very cool! The space was open, and due to the spinning the actors were able to play scenes very naturalistically as they didn’t have to worry too much about sightlines. The key part is Blanche who is portrayed as a sad and pathetic character, always seeking affirmation that ’she is pretty’. She drinks heavily, but tries to hide it, until the end. The accent adopted by Gillian Anderson – a whiny Southern drawl – annoyed me. It seemed to be overplayed. I was advised, however, by someone who knows more about these thing (yes, my beautiful daughter), that this was how it should be. Once I knew that, I settled to it and was less distracted by it. I mean she was just doing the classic breathy Southern drawl… Everyone’s accents were pretty strong actually. And our 3 central characters; Blanche, Stella (Vanessa Kirby) and Stanley (Ben Foster) were fantastic!


The fact that this was a play performed in a single set for three hours, and that I stayed awake (this is always my measure of how good a film is) says a lot about the writing, directing and portrayal of the play. Certainly not fun, certainly not something to be enjoyed, but a strong and convincing, and at many times a disturbing, piece of theatre. Very long, but very good.

 

This House (filmed at NT in 2013 and streamed on 28th May 2020)


The story of parliament from 1974 to 1979. There is a hung parliament, with the Labour party marginally ahead of the Tories – and wanting to stay that way. How can parties carry or block bills in this circumstance? Through the good efforts of the Whips, who are the core of this production. If you ever wanted to know how our democracy works in the Palace of Westminster, this is for you. I am not a political beast, but thoroughly enjoyed this insight into the running of parliament. Mum and I, disgracefully, don’t know a huge amount about politics, and especially the inner workings of the House of Commons. As she said, this was a great insight and really enjoyable.


An accurate portrayal of the shenanigans of the time (including complaints about breast feeding in parliament, Heseltine waving the mace in a brawl and Big Ben stopping – a bad omen?); witty and at times worrying! The script by James Graham is fantastic, it is funny, and very clever. The overlapping dialogue that jumped between characters and offices was ingenious and the pace rarely faltered. The Speaker for the House of Commons would call characters into the space, introducing them to the audience simply and effectively by their constituency, I thought this was brilliant. We learn about ‘pairing’, a gentleman’s agreement where if a constituent of one party is unable to attend a vote, the other Party removes one of their members from the vote as well. This process breaks down, and we see the Labour Party wheeling people in on their sick beds to vote. ‘Nobody dies in the Palace of Westminster’, characters do die however (but not in Westminster), the company marked these deaths with the individual straightening their ties or smoothing their suit and hair and ascending the aisle through the audience into a bright light. Sharp, witty and effective. We see the Whips frantically trying to solicit support from the minor parties ‘on a promise’, racing to get to them before the other Party. The introduction of a female Whip (Lauren O’Neill) also causes some consternation, but she is no push-over, rejecting the frequent apologies for bad language and eventually being the Whip willing to be most ’aggressive’ in securing a vote.


The action moves from the main Chamber of the House of Commons (the back of the stage where the majority of ‘Members’ are audience – this was very cool, audience were sat in the classic House of Commons green benches, and their seats would swing round to form the House on opposite sides or swing flat to provide the wall of a corridor), to the Whips’ offices (one for each Party), with a few minor deviations into other locations as the Whips try to drum up support from the minor Parties. Movement from set to set is no more than a change in the focus of the lighting, but this works well, and avoids potentially lengthy scene changes that would otherwise break the flow of the narrative. The set was great, simple and effective. Like Mum said there wasn’t too much stuff or faff and everything seemed to be there for a reason, the adjustable chairs having a starring role. The backdrop of the face of Big Ben was really something. Perhaps inevitably, characters to the ‘right’ are portrayed as pompous and entitled, and those to the ‘left’ as a set of rough diamonds. These caricatures add to the humour of the play and were portrayed effectively by the cast, complete with heckling and ribbing. The cast were brilliant, really brilliant. I believed them all, completely.


A thoroughly enjoyable and educational play, well worth watching! I didn’t take too many notes as we were watching this as I was so enthralled, the notes I did write include very little detail, but gush about how good it is! I really enjoyed this production.

 

(Back to regular Ellie for this last one. Hi!)


Coriolanus, a Donmar Warehouse production (first produced in 2013, streamed on 4th June 2020)


Coriolanus is one of the Shakespeare’s I don’t really know anything about (other than it maybe being fairly gruesome), having never seen it performed before or felt particularly inclined to read. Well, seeing as about 20 mins or so in I started reading a synopsis on my phone because I had no idea what had really happened up until that point… I mean, once I had a vague idea of what had happened and also what was going to happen it felt a lot easier to follow and I enjoyed it for the most part.


I like the Donmar Warehouse, I saw an all-female production of Julius Caesar there in 2012 which I really enjoyed. Like then, the space was stripped all the way back to the back brick wall in this production. With just chairs and a ladder in the space, simple but effective, nothing else was needed. The lighting helped to set scenes and create rooms. However, when action happened to wander outside the light, it was completely lost. Projection onto the brick also helped to establish scenes. There was paint used, to mark space, and write stuff, I didn’t have any particular feeling towards this. It was just there.

It was suitably graphic and gruesome, Coriolanus (played by Tom Hiddleston) returns from a solo battle covered in blood which he showers off on stage. This was quite a powerful image, the brave warrior in pain. He seems softer, we sympathise with him and he seems truly gracious when he is trying to refuse consul (a chief magistrate of the Roman Republic). This false sense of security in his character provides us with a shock when he changes so violently into a dick (for want of better language) and when he is eventually exiled for being said dick, you’re like damn right he should be exiled! The cast in general were good, special mentions to Debroah Findlay (Volumnia – Coriolanus’ Mum), Alfred Enoch (Titus Lartius – Coriolanus’ mate) and Elliot Levey (Brutus – an elected official who speaks for the people). I spent a while trying to remember where I recognised Birgitte Hjort Sørensen from, its Pitch Perfect 3. The cast seemed to have a fairly good grasp on the text, some moments landing brilliantly, like the horse bet (Act 1 Scene 4). Other moments seemed to me to completely miss the mark however, like Coriolanus’ ‘O mother’ speech (Act 5, Scene 3), I can’t articulate how much this speech disappointed me.


The music was appropriately violent, the fights choreographed well, the costumes were a good mix of classical and modern – Hiddleston’s trousers were pretty tight… All in all, I did enjoy this production, it had many features which I enjoyed. I felt sorry for the audience sat on the sides as very little was directed towards them. I think I found the action a bit difficult to follow sometimes as the distinctions between multiple characters played by the same actors weren’t clear enough. Also, as with many war/fight related Shakespeare’s, lots of people did lots of shouting words with no real intentions.


All this being said, once I knew what was supposed to be happening, I could follow the production happily and was interested for the majority. All that for some grain!

 

We’re at the end! Thank you for reading gang, did you see them? What did you think? The National Theatre has some interesting videos on a couple of the production’s webpages, give them a watch for some more info.


I have to say that having got my teeth stuck into this post, I feel better than I did at the start. Thank you. Hopefully, we’ll be back soon with some more interesting stuff for you to have a looksee at! Until then stay safe, use your voice, and do the work.

Ellie and Anita x


 

Cast and Creatives Lists:


Theatres and Companies included in this blog:

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