Posted by Bonnie at
9.22pm
I've just uploaded the screencaps from Episode 2 of Boy Meets Girl. Sorry this took me a little longer than expected but I've been quite busy with various things.
View the full gallery
There'll be more updates from me over the coming weeks, including screencaps from Episodes 3 and 4 of Boy Meets Girl, screencaps from the films Redemption Road and The Young Victoria, and some new multimedia items as well.
Hope you enjoy the screencaps. 
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Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
Stella Gonet was the first Titiana I saw; I remember being faintly shocked by her randy Fairy Queen, who tussled loudly with a man named Bottom in a huge, swinging hammock. That was at the Barbican in 1995 and, as a young girl, I was frightened a little by this prowling Fairy Queen; she also lent the play a veneer of sophistication and 'adultness' that somehow pushed me away.
Yet A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that is obsessed with young love and young people. This is perhaps why Gonet's horny Titania upset — she felt too grown up. Judi Dench, now in her 70s, might not be the obvious choice to solve this problem, yet her performance is remarkably youthful, innocent and free.
Dench's Titiana is both regal and ridiculous. In the opening scene, Dench is a dead-ringer for Elizabeth I, processing smoothly above and amongst her subjects. But the clues to her later transformation are there from the start: though she sweeps about in a majestic gown, two white forms sprout up from behind her dress, faintly reminiscent of angel's wings. Once under Oberon's spell and trapped by Bottom's questionable charms, Dench's early commanding presence melts away and her Titiana dissolves into a giddy school-girl, in love for the first time.
Dench abandons herself to the role and finds real innocence in her performance. Everything about her feels young: her smile is impossibly wide and her laugh guttural and unconscious as she fawns over her ass, clinging onto his furry form and affectionately joining in with his snorting laughter. To see one of our finest, most experienced actors drool over a donkey only notches up the silliness of these scenes, as well as highlighting Shakespeare's talent for conjuring up near-impossible fantasies, yet somehow making them believable on-stage.
Dench's playfulness is systematic of the light, whimsical feel to Peter Hall's absorbing Rose Theatre production. The show is underpinned by a desire to have fun with Shakespeare; a quality that is sometimes lost in more 'complicated', modern-day productions. Hall achieves this playful feeling by encouraging exuberant but unfussy performances from his actors and creating little interference on-stage. The floor is black, the props kept to a minimum and the scenery sketched in with some clever lighting; these simple stage effects allow the piece to skip along at quite a pace and prevent any feeling of formality creeping in.
The smooth staging and unfettered performances mean the show often feels more like a drama festival, a family Christmas schtick, than a Shakespeare production. This is just as it is should be and means that Bottom and his amateur actor pals, rehearsing a sublimely awful play to perform to Theseus, fit in seamlessly with the overall production. In fact, whereas sometimes this framework involving Bottom and his pals can feel a little stiff — tagged onto a more formal, ethereal Shakespeare play — here, this paltry but plucky group of performers set the tone for this bubbling, high-energy production.
Chris Jones as Bottom absolutely owns the stage, which juts into the audience and allows him to grab hold of the audience instantly. It is a performance packed with natural comic flourishes — silly gestures, winks, lewd noises, whatever feels right at the time — from an actor unfazed and inspired by Shakespeare. From amateur actor to ass, he is an explosive and addictive presence on-stage and when his slow-mo death finally arrives, the audience is reluctant to let him go.
Bottom is obviously comic gold, but there are nuggets lurking everywhere in this production and none more sparkling than Charles Edwards' Oberon. Looking and sounding like Dr Who in fancy dress, Edwards plays the Fairy King as a limelight-hogging Queen. Edwards sulks, struts, gossips and meddles his way through the play in a vibrantly camp performance, which works well with Dench's giddy transformation.
There are notably tougher, more complicated roles in this play and Rachael Stirling, though she is an undoubtedly powerful actress, feels slightly out of synch with the show. Her Helena is the character on the wrong side of young love and her absolute submittal to the dashing Demetrius sometimes feels too painful in this relatively painless production.
Reese Ritchie also has some problems as Puck — he can cackle and pounce across stage as much as he likes, but his Puck is missing some punch. It is a gem of a role — open to bold, unique interpretations — but Ritchie misses the mark, hovering somewhere between frightening and fun.
That the two palpably darker roles stutter slightly is perhaps indicative of a production that, although deeply enjoyable, can feel a touch light in places. But does that really matter in a play that ends with a spectacularly awful amateur production, which is largely there for big, belly laughs? This is a play that both celebrates and laughs at the illusion of theatre and the illusion of young love — something that Hall's production recognises and recreates quite wonderfully.
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Posted by Bonnie at
4.44pm
Today I've concentrated on getting the gallery updated, particularly with photos from Rachael's various stage productions. I've been gathering together all of the photos from A Midsummer Night's Dream that I can find, and you can see those in the gallery now:
View the full gallery
I've also added photos from the after party. I've updated the performance galleries for The Priory, A Woman of No Importance, Anna in the Tropics and The Taming of the Shrew.
In addition to this, I've added some photos from the Discover Wilton's Fundraising Gala in December 2007. Thank you very much to Philippa for those.
Finally, I've added a further review of A Midsummer Night's Dream, from The Times again, but a different reviewer.
I'll be back with more updates during the week.
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Posted by Bonnie at
12.00am
Thanks to the moronic incompetence of South West Trains and a view of passengers as The Enemy rather than valued customers, I arrived at Kingston's Rose Theatre with -30 seconds to spare.
I know listening to someone's commuting woes is about as interesting as listening to their dreams, but the point is, I was in a really foul temper to start with. I emerged nearly three hours later with a fixed and goofy smile on my face, undismayed even by the prospect of my return journey. A Midsummer Night's Dream may, indeed, be "the silliest stuff that ever I heard", as Shakespeare cheerfully admits via Hippolyta in a helpful meta-commentary. But in this superlative new Peter Hall production, as feelgood shows go, this 400-year-old favourite is still as good as any.
Judi Dench as Titania may be too old — she first played the role some years before I was born — but what a lot she brings to it. She is every inch a queen here, the Queen of the Fairies but also the Virgin Queen of England, with richly embroidered Elizabethan dress, white ruff, and pearls sparkling in her dyed carroty hair.
The scene in which she falls for a translated Bottom, now adorned with an ass's head, is as comical as ever, yet you're also convinced Titania really is in the throes of passionate love. The line, "O, how I love thee, how I dote on thee!", spoken with such husky and tremulous longing, and with that permanent crack in her voice, is deeply touching — even in this most farcical of situations. When they awake, you're in no doubt how they have spent the night. One of Shakespeare's more scandalous jokes, like the mythical Pasiphae, the clear implication here is that Titania's affections have, er, crossed the species barrier.
Recent productions by Peter Hall have sometimes felt like the work of a master, but one whose best is behind him. This Dream is a tremendously energetic septuagenarian rebuttal of such impertinent thoughts, with some brilliant additions. Bottom's fluffed lines about the lion having deflowered his beloved (he means "devoured" — another bestiality joke) is made funnier still here with Peter Quince as an irascible prompt. "Devoured!"
What with the fairies' diabolical mischief-making, and the shambolic am-dram of the rude mechanicals, it's not unusual in many productions for the central story of the four lovers to take second or even third place, and feel like an interruption of the fun. Not here, thanks to some excellent acting from this strong quartet, thoroughly engaging with all their youthful impassioned energy. Tam Williams makes a boyish and impatient Lysander and Rachael Stirling is poignant and credible as poor plain Helena, the drama driven by Shakespeare's customary, richly humane sense that we are never so ludicrous, nor so lovable, as when we are in love, and in thrall to the random arrows of the "waggish boy".
Hall writes interestingly in an introduction of how the play is essentially "about marriage, the necessity of it, and how we can learn to be married". And there is another fine touch when Bottom the ass starts to laugh, and it comes out as a harsh bray. His besotted Titania joins in the laughter — again in a harsh, companionable bray, just as married couples do, growing together in habits, tastes, tics, everything.
But Hall also has the lovers portraying love as, emphatically, a compound of the physical as well as the spiritual, visibly panting as they chase after each other, and not just because they're out of breath. Lysander, suddenly in thrall to Helena thanks to Puck's potion, actually starts tearing his clothes off as soon as he sets eyes on her. Indeed, the whole play here seems to be richly mocking Helena's own lofty declaration in Act One, that "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind". On the contrary, love is very much rooted in the earthier emotions, and if it isn't, it won't work out.
As for the rude mechanicals, they're a delight. The last scene, when they finally stage their atrocious play of Pyramus and Thisbe, is genuinely, riotously funny. Oliver Chris shows us as pleasing a Bottom as you'll see this side of Copacabana beach, and Leon Williams is also excellent as Flute playing Thisbe. The whole troupe speak with Birmingham, or possibly Black Country, accents. I don't know whether this is a vague reference to Shakespeare's Warwickshire, but it is somehow funnier still to hear Bottom as a Brum Bum.
Elizabeth Bury is responsible for both set and costume, and achieves great things with the latter, at least. The hard, mirrored court of Athens looks a bit like an East German engineering college, which isn't very inspiring, even when you add shadowy trees and some twinkly stars. But the costumes are terrific, from Dame Judi's bejewelled and regal splendour to Bottom's daft galligaskins. As silly stuff goes, this Midsummer Night's Dream still casts its moonlit magic.
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Posted by Bonnie at
9.23pm
A quick update from me this evening, as I've just added all of the recent reviews for A Midsummer Night's Dream to the website.
I've also added a fantastic Evening Standard interview with Rachael, which you can read here: Rachael Stirling is a rising stage star — and she's in love with her ass (this refers to her boyfriend, Oliver Chris, who plays Bottom).
In the interview, Rachael mentions that she writes restaurant reviews for Diplomat magazine, and I have added those to the site as well. I recommend that you read them as they're very funny and well-written.
Finally, here are all of the reviews of the play that I could find. Some brilliant praise for Rachael in these; in fact in many cases, she is singled out as being the star of the show. I haven't seen a single bad word about her performance in any of them. Fantastic!
Who else has been to see the play or is planning to go?
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