Helen Mirren in Phedre
Jun. 14th, 2009 07:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anefTo the National Theatre yesterday with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
la_marquise_de_ and the Marquis, whose LJ name I forget, and Michael WINOLJ, to see the Dame in Phedre. Having failed to see Diana Rigg in Medea, many years ago, I was determined to see this, and booked tickets ages ago. Helen Mirren! Greek Tragedy! What's not to like? Well, unfortunately....
Visually the production was stunning. The BBC review puts it best: "Nicholas Hytner's new version benefits from not just a first class cast, but a breathtaking set - a marble palace drenched in Mediterranean sunshine, with a sky of holiday brochure blue that darkens as the ghastliness unfolds." Add to that growls of thunder from the blue sky at moments of tension, and you have all the atmosphere you need.
But the director Hytner seemed to think that the play was problematic, and decided it had to be performed as Racine's audience would have seen it. The programme says: "How did the actors manage to secure the audience’s attention? They performed in a declamatory style: they employed an artificially emphatic pronunciation and intonation; and they made extensive use of gesture." Unfortunately, that's the way that Hytner decided to direct it, and for me it didn't work. I found it really frustrating as he has directed some productions that I've loved - The History Boys, and Much Ado About Nothing with Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale which was one of the standout experiences of last year. In Much Ado the actors inhabited the text, the lines came to them as naturally as breathing, and you really believed that they were thinking up the quick-fire dialogue on the spot.
Phedre could not have been more different. The gestures were stagy, the actors declaimed their lines as though they were reading them from the script, and Hipploytus was just wooden. Theseus reminded us all of Brian Blessed, enough said. There were points where they seemed deliberately to ruin the sense of a sentence by breaking at the end of a line. Helen Mirren was good in parts, as was Margaret Tyzack as her old nurse Oenone, but I kept being distanced by the acting. There was one performance which really made sense of the lines, and that was from John Shrapnel as Theramene, Hippolytus's aged advisor. Every line that he spoke had meaning, and he did an absolutely terrific messenger's speech reporting Hippolytus's death. It was very dramatic, but he spoke with the text, illuminating it, not against it.
Anyway, I'm still glad we went to see it - at least I won't spend the next few years regretting that I didn't make the effort. And it is apparently going to be shown in cinemas on June 25th, so you can make your own minds up.
la_marquise_de_ and the Marquis, whose LJ name I forget, and Michael WINOLJ, to see the Dame in Phedre. Having failed to see Diana Rigg in Medea, many years ago, I was determined to see this, and booked tickets ages ago. Helen Mirren! Greek Tragedy! What's not to like? Well, unfortunately....Visually the production was stunning. The BBC review puts it best: "Nicholas Hytner's new version benefits from not just a first class cast, but a breathtaking set - a marble palace drenched in Mediterranean sunshine, with a sky of holiday brochure blue that darkens as the ghastliness unfolds." Add to that growls of thunder from the blue sky at moments of tension, and you have all the atmosphere you need.
But the director Hytner seemed to think that the play was problematic, and decided it had to be performed as Racine's audience would have seen it. The programme says: "How did the actors manage to secure the audience’s attention? They performed in a declamatory style: they employed an artificially emphatic pronunciation and intonation; and they made extensive use of gesture." Unfortunately, that's the way that Hytner decided to direct it, and for me it didn't work. I found it really frustrating as he has directed some productions that I've loved - The History Boys, and Much Ado About Nothing with Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale which was one of the standout experiences of last year. In Much Ado the actors inhabited the text, the lines came to them as naturally as breathing, and you really believed that they were thinking up the quick-fire dialogue on the spot.
Phedre could not have been more different. The gestures were stagy, the actors declaimed their lines as though they were reading them from the script, and Hipploytus was just wooden. Theseus reminded us all of Brian Blessed, enough said. There were points where they seemed deliberately to ruin the sense of a sentence by breaking at the end of a line. Helen Mirren was good in parts, as was Margaret Tyzack as her old nurse Oenone, but I kept being distanced by the acting. There was one performance which really made sense of the lines, and that was from John Shrapnel as Theramene, Hippolytus's aged advisor. Every line that he spoke had meaning, and he did an absolutely terrific messenger's speech reporting Hippolytus's death. It was very dramatic, but he spoke with the text, illuminating it, not against it.
Anyway, I'm still glad we went to see it - at least I won't spend the next few years regretting that I didn't make the effort. And it is apparently going to be shown in cinemas on June 25th, so you can make your own minds up.
