MargoMusing

The play is Dr Semmelweiss which as you may expect, is about Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss, (1818-1865), the Hungarian obstetrician who pioneered the use of hand-washing in hospitals, prior to Louis Pasteur and  Joseph Lister's research into bacteria. 

He noted that the incidence of puerperal fever / childbed fever (sepsis) was significantly lower in women who were treated in a ward run by midwives than one run by doctors, and, following the death of his friend and colleague Jakob Kolletschka, after accidentally butting his finger with a scalpel during an autopsy,realised the key difference was tht the doctors and medical students also attended and  performed autopsies, and posited that they were carrying 'cadaveric particles' or 'decaying organic matter' from cadavers, on their hands.  

He instituted hand-washing with chlorinated lime (which was used to clean and remove the smell, in the mortuary) , and reduced the mortality rate by around 90%.

Sadly, things did not end well for Ignaz - his conclusions were not accepted and, in a tragic irony, he died of septic shock after being  committed to  an insane asylum.

The play is told mostly in flashback, we start with Semmelweiss (Mark Rylance)  in Budapest with his wife Maria,  (Thalissa Teixeira) visited by his former colleagues seeking to persuade him to return to Vienna to speak, at a conference, about his discovery.

As we watch him , back in Vienna, learning that the death rate is higher in the Doctor's than the Midwives' ward, and facing the first death of a patient, then follow his story as he works out the connections and then struggles to cope with the difficulties of being unable to to convince others of his findings, and of being unable to navigate the politics needed to make people accept his theory.

Rylance's performance is, perhaps not unexpectedly, superb - passionate, and tragic - haunted by his failures, absolutely single-minded (and therefore intentionally cruel) in his determination to convince others of what he is certain is true, and his anger at those who cannot, or will not, accept his findings. He is ultimately overwhelmed by the failure to change things as much, or as quickly, as he wishes.

The play is very balletic - the Salomé quartet  provide music throughout, and there are dancers,(choreography by Antonia Franceschi)  as the various mothers, adding to the sense that Semmelweiss is always surrounded by, haunted by, the women he has failed to save.

Although Rylance's performance is the centre of this play, the supporting cast is also very strong, particularly Thalissa Teixeira as his wife, Jackie Clune as Nurse Muller (who also gets some of the best lines) and  Enyi Okoronkwo (Franz Arneth) 

It was planned and written before Covid hit, but inevitably  feels relevant and contemporary.

Very well worth seeing, and on at Bristol Old Vic until 19th February.

Last January, I saw Kenneth Branagh's production of 'A Winter's Tale', featuring Dame Judi Dench and Hadley Fraser, as well as Branagh himself. This week, I saw a very different production of the same play, by the 'Cheek by Jowl company'.

It was interesting - a very different production, with an understated set, and a lot of cuts. particularly in the second half of the play. 

In this production, Leontes (Orlando James) is clearly, from the beginning, unhinged - as his jealousy of his wife, Hermione (Natalie Redmall-Quirke) and friend, Polixenes (Sam Woolf) spill over, he poses them like mannequins, in the image of his fevered imaginings,  and swings between affection and violence in his treatment of his son, too. 

In the later parts of the play, once Perdita (Eleanor McLoughlin)  is grown up, the production seems to start to have a little more fun, and to approach the text more irreverently. The shearing celebration becomes a mini-festival, and when Mopsa and Dorcas fall out over which of them the Shepherd's son has promised gifts to, the scene was presented like a Jeremy Kyle show, with Autolycus (Ryan Donaldson) .

I found myself a little disappointed by the way that Paulina's (Joy Richardson)  character was portrayed - rather than her being a courageous,and tragic figure, she came over as more as a scold, which was a shame. (I am pretty sure this was a directorial decision, not down to the actor - she doubled as Mopsa and was excellent in that role).

Over all, I enjoyed the production, but I think it was uneven, and that the first scenes of Leontes' obsessive delusions, and the comedy in the second half, were the strongest parts.

The production is currently touring (dates and locations on Cheek by Jowl's site)

On Thursday, I attended the first ever performance of Bristol Old Vic's newest production, 'The Grinning Man'.

It's a musical, loosely based on Victor Hugo's novel, 'L'homme qui rit' , and is set in an alternative  17th Century Bristol, capital of a divided England, seat of an aging and despotic king, and his children of questionable character.

Our protagonist is Grympayne, an orphan, disfigured by his mutilated face, adopted as a child by travelling showman and puppeteer Ursus, (and his pet wolf.), and seeking the truth about his past. (which is, it turns out, complex and full of coincidences).

The play involves puppets (I loved the wolf, less so the two children, but happily they grow up and turn into people instead of puppets fairly early on, so that was OK!)

It very melodramatic, and at times somewhat surreal, and is very well done. It's pretty dark, with murder and mayhem to spare, but also very funny in places. I particularly enjoyed the foppish Lord David!  Being the first preview, there were inevitably a few minor glitches - one incident where the action briefly stopped and SM had to come on stage, and a couple of moments when players stumbled on their lines, but even with this minor hiccoughs it was well worth seeing.

Judging by the reaction from the audience at this first preview, I think it will be popular.

There is a sample of some of the music from the show, here, and the production runs at Bristol Old Vic until 13th November.

I had some trouble getting to see 'The Libertine' .

I'd booked a ticket, then had to rearrange due to a work commitment, they sent me a ticket for the wrong night.. and then I was busy recovering from anaphylactic shock and completely forgot to go on the night I did have a ticket for!

Fortunately for me, however, the play is in Bath for nearly 3 weeks, so there was time for me get to see it.

Remember I mentioned that 'The Rover' might have been based on either Henry or John Wilmot (or both of them)?

The Libertine is all about John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester poet, courtier, soldier, critic, libertine and amoral man about town.

Wilmot was the son of Henry Wilmot, who was created Earl of Rochester by Charles II in gratitude for his support during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. He inherited his father's title at the age of 11, and joined Charles' court at the age of 17. He wooed his wife by abducting her (for which he spent 3 weeks in the Tower of London, being released only after grovelling to the King) and served  (apparently with great courage) in the 2nd Dutch War, while still in his teens.

However, this play deals with his later life.

It opens (after orange sellers come through the auditorium as the audience take their sets) with Wilmot (Dominic Cooper) addressing the audience, telling us not to like him, that he is generally at his worst when he appears in a sympathetic light, and goes on to comment that he is permanently 'up for it' with women, and generally also with men...

Given Dominic Cooper's looks, this was not entirely off-putting...

His Lordship came over as rude, crude, selfish, but cleverer than several sack-fulls of monkeys, and tragic in his self-destructive habits.

We watched as he wenched and drank his way across 17th C London, and met his match in actress Elizabeth Barry (Ophelia Lovibond), determined to succeed as a serious actress and not , despite his support, to do so dependent on Rochester. I believe this may be Ophelia Lovibond's stage debut - if so, it's an excellent one. She, and Nina Toussaint White ( who plays Rochester's favourite prostitute) both give excellent performances each in their own way standing up to Rochester, and each showing sings of understanding him only too well!

Jasper Britton's Charles II was acerbic and knowing, prepared to turn a blind eye to Rochester's shenanigans only so far (Rochester's attempt to stage a satirical play, including live sex on stage, jokes about the Queen's sex life and a folk dance with dildos are scuppered by the King, who was hoping for a work of literature which would endure and cement his position as patron of the arts...

(the live sex portion isn't shown on stage. The folk dancing with dildos is. In case you were wondering)

It's a very entertaining romp, with a strong cast. Not, however, for those of a Puritan or prudish temperament!

The run at Bath has finished but the play is on at the Theatre Royal Haymarket for 10 weeks. Well worth seeing!

Way back last October, I succumbed to curiosity about what the new Harry Potter story might be, and booked tickets for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child . And, given that you have to buy tickets for two shows, as the story is apparently too long for one, I booked during the preview period when  the tickets were half price!

About 3 weeks ago the tickets arrived.

Last Sunday I caught a train up to London, in order to see the show.

It was a very hot day, so having to queue for security checks was frustrating, although in fairness they were pretty efficient once they opened the doors and got going.

The theatre has been completely redecorated internally, there are lamps with Hogwarts dragons on them, on pillars in the auditorium (and on the canopy outside the theatre) and new Hogwarts wallpaper.

Then of course there is the play itself.

It really is one very long play, show in two parts. Depending on how you book, you can either see the two parts on one day (matinee and evening performance) as I did, or on two successive nights. I think that this is an advantage, as you get to see part two while the end of part one is still fresh in your mind (The break between the two is about 3 hours).

So, what is it like? I'm not going to give a synopsis of the plot, because it hasn't even had press night yet, plus they give you little badges on the way out asking you not to spoil things for later viewers. (although should you decide that you need to know, google and you will find)

What I will say is that it is spectacularly staged - the stage set has an arching framework reminiscent of a railway station, with multiple clocks, and a rather nice display of the phases of the moon on the front arch. The set also includes (at different time) wood panelled walls, moving staircases and a fascinating bookcase.

Over a year ago, I read that Benedict Cumberbatch, of Sherlock, Frankenstein and Smaug fame, was to play Hamlet, live, at the Barbican Theatre in London this year. And I have a group of friends who, like me, like going to the theater- we've previously seen David Tennant in Hamlet, and more recently, in Richard II, and agreed that seeing Mr Cumberbatch's Hamlet would be a good thing to do.

So, with some difficulty, I managed to buy the maximum 6 tickets permitted, (it later turned out that the show was the fastest seller in, well, pretty much ever. I was lucky that there were only a couple of hundred people ahead of me in the queue when I booked - later that day there were lover 10,000)

And a year went by, and on 15th August I reached the point where I was sitting in the stalls, in the Barbican theatre, waiting for the Prince of Denmark.. As the man says 'the readiness is all'

So, was it worth the wait?

I think so.

It should be mentioned that we saw the play on 15th August, which was (although not made clear when we booked, or on our tickets) a preview, 10 days into the run.

The play opens, not with the usual scene of Bernardo and Marcellus on the ramparts of Elsinore, but instead with Hamlet, alone on stage, looking though tea-chests (apparently paced with childhood items) while Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy” plays on an old gramophone player. (The music familiar to many of us as the music from the film 'Moulin Rouge'), establishing him as, at the very least, a little melancholic.

We then moved to a the wedding breakfast, with vast displays of white flowers and of hunting trophies, as Claudius deals with the ambassadors to Norway, Laertes' wish to return to college, an Hamlet's own moodiness.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Hamlet starts walking on the table and giving the  'O, that this too, too solid flesh..' soliloquy  (with the rest of the cast moved in slow-motion, which I thought was an effective way of allowing the soliloquies to be given, and to be clearly internal,  despite the number of other people on stage.)

Very effective.

Obviously Cumberbatch is the headliner in the production, but the cast as a whole is very strong:

Ciaran Hinds' Claudius doesn't really let the menacing, dangerous side of the character out in the earlier scenes of the play, but as the play progresses and he begins to fear Hamlet, and his own conscience, he becomes more obviously threatening.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith was a hugely powerful and commanding Laertes. Given that he has a relatively small amount of time on stage, he packed one hell of a punch.

I don't think I have seen Holdbrook-Smith before but will definitely be looking out for him in future!

Laertes

Gertrude and Hamlet

I was a little less impressed with Ophelia (Sian Brooke) and with Horatio (Leo Bill) as characters, although I think n both cases this was a fault in the production not in the actors. In neither case did their relationships with Hamlet quite 'jell', for me. Ophelia's madness was beautifully done in its subtle contrast with Hamlet's own feigned madness, but she was less convincing as a object of his love, or even as a 'safe' friend for the emotionally immature Hamlet of this production.

Ophelia

Laertes and Hamlet. Not going to end well.