First up, a bril­liant inter­pre­ta­tion of a Shakespeare’s Richard II.

Richard II is a few years into his king­ship and is start­ing to flex his pow­er. After some dubi­ous deci­sions regard­ing his empire he takes the chance to seize land after the death of John of Gaunt  thus set­ting Gaunt’s child, Bol­ing­broke, against him. Richard seeks sup­port from his allies but pre­vi­ous bad deci­sions means he is aban­doned by those he thought he could trust.

Direc­tor James Cain directs a great cast includ­ing Hay­den Frost (Richard II) and Mag­gie White (Hen­ry Bol­ing­broke) as the main play­ers. Frost is excel­lent as Richard II, show­ing the qual­i­ties that helped him be king as well as the rea­sons for his down­fall. White is staunch and unyield­ing, relent­less in the pur­suit of the goal. There are plen­ty of oth­er famil­iar Welling­ton faces on stage as well, all doing a ster­ling job. A scene between Patrick Davies (John of Gaunt) and Bri­anne Kerr (Duke of York) is one of my high­lights as it shows the des­per­a­tion the two have for their fam­i­lies and coun­try in the face of Richard’s increas­ing­ly strange deci­sions.

Lucas Neal’s set uses the full height of the Pro­peller Stage which is great to see. (Try not to sit high­er than 3 rows from the back if you can oth­er­wise the lights will get in the way of the action.) It’s neat­ly lit by Tony Black’s design which includes some nifty hand held lights. Lisa Kiyomoto-Fink’s cos­tumes high­light the fac­tions & who sup­ports who, help­ing to clar­i­fy the sto­ry.  Move­ment design­er Mag­gie White gives us visu­al inter­est on the small­ish set while Flinn Gendall’s sound design pro­vides just enough atmos­phere with­out dis­tract­ing from the action.

Fan­tas­tic.

  • Richard II on at BATS The­atre to 27 August 2016

 

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Broth­er and sis­ter, Vanya and Sonia, live in their par­ents’ old house which is now owned by Masha, their suc­cess­ful movie star sis­ter. Masha vis­its for a week­end with her boyfriend Spike in order to go to a cos­tume par­ty down the road. Bud­ding actress Nina vis­its and clean­er Cas­san­dra has dire warn­ings for every­one.

Gavin Ruther­ford (Vanya) and Rachel Hen­ry (Sonia) open the play with a won­der­ful­ly drea­ry morn­ing rou­tine. They have a good rap­port that is accen­tu­at­ed when Eri­na Daniels (Cas­san­dra) arrives on stage. She is showy and dra­mat­ic, a com­plete con­trast to the oth­er two who seem as if they don’t have a life out­side of the house. Their life is inter­rupt­ed by the arrival of Emma Kinane (Masha) with boyfriend Simon Leary (Spike) in tow. Kinane can switch char­ac­ter moti­va­tions quick­ly which she plays to full effect. Leary spends a lot of his time with his shirt off which pleased the stu­dents behind me. Final­ly Har­ri­et Preb­ble (Nina) arrives on the scene like a stone dropped in a buck­et of water send­ing rip­ples through the lives of the oth­ers. (Except Cas­san­dra who is a mar­vel­lous law unto her­self.)