Posted by Bonnie on 25 May 2005 at
10:02
Three new photos have been added to the site: two from Theatre of Blood, and one from the Evening Standard. It's actually a larger version of one of the small photos I added a few days ago. Thank you to the lovely person who emailed the photos to me. 
In addition to the photos, another few Theatre of Blood reviews have been added to the site. One is fairly negative and doesn't mention Rachael, whereas the others are slightly more positive: one calls her "distinguished".
I'd watch out if I were you, Mr. Macaulay!
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Posted by Bonnie on 25 May 2005 at
12:00
Jim Broadbent's most recent appearance at the National before Theatre of Blood was coincidentally also in a play that featured several elaborate and gruesome murders, The Pillowman. That is where the similarity ends since this play falls firmly into the boundaries of high camp despite the assurances from the programme that state the contrary. Broadbent stars as Edward Lionheart, a disaffected actor, a genius in his own opinion, overlooked for the Critics Circle Award of 1972 for performance of Shakespeare. Lionheart's revenge is to lure the seven critics responsible for the judging to an old theatre and exact a bloody revenge upon his detractors with the aid of a rag tag bunch of tramps.
The play is a staging of the 1973 film which starred Vincent Price as Lionheart and Diana Rigg as his daughter, played here by Rigg's real life daughter Rachael Stirling fitting perfectly into the role and providing an outstanding vamp like performance, one of two real stand outs in the production. It is a very mixed bag of outstanding set pieces, laugh out loud funny scenes and the completely tiresome and dull. It is hard to escape the fact that Jim Broadbent was so much better served by The Pillowman, there he relished his role each time I saw him perform. In Theatre of Blood he seems tired and perhaps already bored by the long Shakespearian speeches he is called upon to perform badly, staggering round the stage looking like a mixture of Frank N' Furter from the Rocky Horror Show and Dracula. One section, a flashback explaining his apparent suicide in front of the assembled critics, seemed to drag on for so long that my mind didn't just wander it went for a three mile walk. However it is not a completely wasted appearance in my opinion, there are glimpses of occasional relish, such as his appearance as a camp hairdresser or occasional comic looks to the audience which brought appreciative laughter and claps but they are few and far between.
The assembled critics are presented as stereotypes, the ambitious blonde, the middle aged alcoholic, the screaming old queen carrying round his pair of poodles. That is not to say there is not to be fun to be had with the actor's characterisations in the roles, Bette Bourne as the previously mentioned Queen is hilarious and the other stand out, it just shows the limits of this piece. It feels very two dimensional and does not manage to extract any emotional response except the joy of seeing the utterly over the top gore on stage. Blood doesn't just flow, it flies into the air and out towards the audience, the murders which are representations of the deaths from Shakespearian play are often fantastically funny to behold. There is a nod to relevance and meaning during a discussion of the running of the National Theatre but I think that the original material may have been better served by a 90 minute small scale production in an environment like The Venue, once home to Taboo, where some element of similar audience involvement might bring the piece to life. This is far from being the National Theatre's finest hour but I would recommend it to fans of gore, it is not often there is an attempt to transfer the genre from screen to stage and here at least those elements of the production work splendidly.
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Posted by Bonnie on 25 May 2005 at
12:00
In the latest and possibly unlikeliest entry in the ongoing line-up of film-to-stage transfers, Theatre of Blood, Jim Broadbent plays a man possessed. And who can blame him? As Edward Lionheart, a failed Shakespearean actor whose method of revenge on his detractors makes Richard III seem a pussycat, Broadbent gives full, gleeful rein to an activity many in (and out of) the industry have doubtless considered indulging numerous times: murdering theatre critics. And messily, too.
No one at Daily Variety feels his wrath, though Lee Simpson and Phelim McDermott's adaptation of the cult Vincent Price horror film has inordinate fun elsewhere all but naming names.
Will any of this score with those hapless uninitiates not already versed in the intricate byways of the commentator and the artist — not to mention the rivalries between critics? Probably not. But everyone else should have a good, anarchic time, some first-act longueurs notwithstanding, and perhaps emit the odd squeal as well. When it comes to strategies of extinction, Lionheart is a breed apart.
Theatre of Blood is undeniably lowbrow, so it comes as something of a delicious shock to find it packaged in such ravishing high style by director McDermott, whose Improbable theatre troupe has co-produced the show with the National on an elevated budget. If the play does transfer to Broadway, which seems entirely possible given that street's self-infatuation, it won't come cheap.
Rae Smith's funhouse of a set simply won't quit, its decaying Victorian surrounds alone worth the price of a ticket. With its famously deep stage, the Lyttelton by now has a history of celebrated designs from which their given shows were inseparable: Theatre of Blood immediately joins the ranks of such visual extravaganzas as An Inspector Calls and Les Parents Terribles that have a visceral effect, too — and not just because the flying apparatus that sends Lionheart airborne looks a tad lightweight for Broadbent's frame.
The jolts come mostly via the savagings that beset our poshly spoken scribes, who range from a poodle-carrying critic for the Sunday Times (Bette Bourne, in prim, prime form) to a bibulous Daily Mail scribe (Tim McMullan), who ultimately cracks under the weight of openings: Five plays a week? I can't take it anymore.
And why waste time on ordinary murders when, as Lionheart reasons, you can do them in character? At which point, cue scenes from Julius Caesar, Henry VI, Part I, The Merchant of Venice and Titus Andronicus, all of which find Lionheart giving the performances of his life.
The staging, complete with gothic lighting from Colin Grenfell that has its own spidery allure, imaginatively raises speculation about who will go first? last? best?
But as the evening pans out, it's less the order of the murders that matters than their increasingly inventive nature.
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Posted by Bonnie on 24 May 2005 at
08:02
I have just added a new review to the site — this time from The Telegraph — and also a new photo which accompanied the review. It's slightly larger in size than the other Theatre of Blood photos. 
It feels strange reading all of these reviews from the very newspapers targetted during the course of the play, and it makes me wonder whether any of them have been slightly more complimentary than they might otherwise have been! I doubt that's true, but it is an amusing thought. As Charles Spencer of The Telegraph points out at the end of his, "I just hope this review is positive enough. I'm writing it in the offices of the National Theatre, and I don't want to meet a nasty accident on my way out." Having said that, I'm sure he wasn't kidding when he said that Rachael "brings an alluring erotic charge to the stage"!
Additionally, I would like to remind American visitors that the new Agatha Christie's Marple boxset is available on DVD from today. Unfortunately, it is not possible to buy The Murder at the Vicarage separately, so it may be a little expensive for you if all you want to see is Rachael. However, I can recommend the other stories in the series, and we purchased the boxset as much for Rachael as for the charms of Geraldine McEwan, Keeley Hawes, Tara Fitzgerald, and two lesbian storylines — the latter not involving Rachael this time, though! So we do recommend it, though it may not be everyone else's cup of English tea. It can be purchased from Amazon.com for $41.99.
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Posted by Bonnie on 24 May 2005 at
12:00
My closest actor friend gave me the DVD of the 1973 Theatre of Blood film last Christmas. Since it's one of the worst films ever made and since it features an actor gruesomely killing in turn every critic who failed to give him the Critics' Circle award, I was unsure how to react, until he reassured me that he wanted me to enjoy (as I did) the episode at the start in which Michael Hordern, as the FT critic, complains that a sub-editor has cut his best line.
The new stage production of Theatre of Blood -a collaboration between the National and Improbable Theatres — is better than that, but only a little; and it is considerably longer. At first, the pleasure is that Lee Simpson and Phelim McDermott, who have turned the film into this play, have set almost all of it in a single derelict theatre; and McDermott's direction and Rae Smith's designs make the theatre itself a place of wonders at first. Simpson and McDermott can be among the most imaginative people in British theatre today, and the most enamoured of old-style theatricality. Who could not love the old proscenium arch Smith has designed?
Eventually, however, that's mere periphery. The basic story here is crummy: the critics are bad, but the actor is worse. It might be better if he was good in an old-fashioned way — the Edith Evans or John Gielgud style. But as it is, we have to listen to long reams of cobbled-together Shakespeare spoken in a generalised bad-on-purpose way by Jim Broadbent. Bad Shakespeare can be great entertainment if it's well pointed: I take ever-growing pleasure from the Romeo and Juliet pastiche in the RSC's Nicholas Nickleby because it is an anthology of every bad verse-speaking mannerism. But Broadbent is a bore, the dialogue is slow, there is too much padding, and our time is wasted.
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Look forward to the US release of both films.
