Janie is not partial to Shakespeare, but this production directed by Adrian Noble with Derek Jacobi as Macbeth and Cheryl Campbell as Lady Macbeth was quite special and we both thought it very good.
I now learn that one of the three witches was Tracy-Ann Oberman, who went on (shortly after this production I think), to perform in NewsRevue/SportsRevue. Not our first sighting of her, that was in The Changeling at Stratford:
Returning to The Scottish Play, though, this is one of two productions Janie and I have seen; the other being the Tony Sher/Harriet Walter production to be Ogblogged “in the fullness”.
A couple of contemporaneous reviews survive on-line:
Janie and I binged on The RSC/ The Barbican at the start of 1994 – this is the first of a hat trick of productions we saw there within the space of a few weeks.
We thought this one was very good. I tend to like Michael Hastings’s plays and what a line up for us to see. Emerging names such as Toby Stephens, Jasper Britton & Monica Dolan alongside established stars such as Gemma Jones, Philip Voss & John Carlisle, directed by Steven Pimlott.
The play is basically about Nazi sympathisers in the UK during the war. It was chilling although it did have its moments of humour, as is Michael hastings’s wont.
It seems that Janie decided to “give Shakespeare a go” with me (we have done a few in our time) but in truth she has never got on with Shakespeare. I have got on with Shakespeare but didn’t get on so well with this play and/or this production.
It is a very long play and in truth I don’t think one of Shakespeare’s best. My log records:
We didn’t go great guns on this one.
Good cast: Richard Johnson (Antony), John Nettles (Caesar) and Clare Higgins (Cleopatra).
This production probably helped to put Janie off The Bard, but fortunately did not seem to put her off me, despite the fact that (as I recall) the back-aching and thirst-inducing length of the play did little for our moods, especially mine.
This was the first of two plays Janie and I went to see on our first long weekend away together in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
I had seen The Changeling before, at the RNT in 1988, thought highly of it as a Jacobean revenge tragedy and thought Janie might like it. I didn’t yet realise that she was not so keen on classics/old plays. I’m not sure she realised it yet either.
My log reports:
Not quite to Janie’s taste – I rather liked it.
It was a superb production. Looking through the cast and creatives list you can see why. Cheryl Campell as Beatrice-Joanna, Malcolm Storry as De Flores, Michael Attenborough directing. Also a stellar list of youngsters who would break through in their own right later; Sophie Okeonedo, Barnaby Kay, Dominic Cooke (assisting Attenborough). Even Tracy-Ann Oberman (prior to her NewsRevue & SportsRevue days) puts in an appearance as an inmate of the asylum.
The Swan is an ideal venue for this type of play, much better than the Lyttleton. Very high production quality both times though – hard for me to rank one production above the other.
Stellar cast for this RSC production of the great Chekhov play. Alfred Burke, Simon Russell Beale, Amanda Root, John Carlisle, Susan Fleetwood, Roger Allam…to name but a few. In the capable hands of Terry Hands.
I hadn’t realised that this production was Terry Hands’s swansong for the RSC, but Nicholas de Jongh made much of that fact while praising the production in The Guardian:
I went up to Stratford with Moose (Mara Frank) where we saw this wonderful production of Much Ado. My log, I think mistakenly, suggests that we also saw Troilus And Cressida on that trip, but I suspect that I saw a preview of Troilus on my tod in April when in the Midlands for other reasons, perhaps procuring the programme when returning to Stratford with Moose and thus confusing myself a few years later.
Anyway…
…this was a great show. Susan Fleetwood as Beatrice, Roger Allam as Benedick, John Carlisle as Don Pedro, a fine supporting ensemble and the very capable hands of Bill Alexander directing.
I’ve long been partial to a bit of Michael Hastings; I think he is under-rated as a playwright and novelist. So I no doubt chose this one on the back of its authorship.
It’s quite an odd play; sort-of about the welfare state ideal in the hands of a quirky civil service idealogue. Typical Hastings in its untypicality.
Peter McEnery played the lead and Janet Suzman directed the piece. The Theatricalia entry for the production can be found here. Not yet ever revived (he says in January 2021), I imagine a re-read would quickly determine whether it is now due for a revival or explain why it has not yet been revived.
Michael Billington in The Guardian clearly liked it while peppering his piece with a bit of Billingtonian faint praise.
Writing this one up more than 30 years later, I am a bit confused about when I saw it and with whom, if indeed anyone else. I do know for sure that I saw this production at The Swan and was very taken with it.
I took a week off work just after Easter that year, visiting various friends about the place. I’ll write that up as best I can in due course. But in my appointments diary it clearly states “Troilus” 19 April.
Roll the clock forward to November, I saw Much Ado at the Royal Shakespeare Memorial with Moose. Tucked in with the Much Ado programme is the Troilus programme.
So did I simply pick up the programme in November having seen a preview of Troilus on my tod in April, or did I duck out in April and see this in the autumn with Moose? I think the former, but I’ll see if Moose can help me unpick this one.
Anyway, what a cast and what a fine production I recall. Ralph Fiennes was Troilus and I think it might have been a conversation with him at Lambton Place (my health club, latterly BWW) that encouraged me to see a preview of this production at Stratford.
Amanda Root played Cressida very well and David Troughton was a top notch Hector, Paterson Joseph a fine Patroclus. Wonderful supporting cast full of names that latterly became big. Sam Mendes was a bit of a Shakespeare novice back then.
I remember this play, production and indeed the whole evening very well.
I had long been a fan of Poliakoff’s plays when I went to see this one, having read a great many of his plays and seen a few of the filmed versions of his works, but this was I think only the second time I’d got to see one of his plays on the stage.
My log says:
Very good. We sat next to Poliakoff himself and went on to Daniel [Scordel]’s party afterwards.
“We”, in this instance, was me and Annalisa de Mercur. The evening we attended was a preview – I think possibly even the first or one of the first previews.
I recall us getting to The Pit a little late and struggling to see any available pairs of seats once we got in. Annalisa made a bee-line for some empty seats that were clearly marked “reserved” with Stephen Poliakoff himself sitting next to those reservations.
“You can’t sit there”, I said to Annalisa, “they’re reserved”.
“It’s OK, you can sit there”, said Stephen Poliakoff.
“Are you sure it’s OK?” I said to him.
“Yes, they won’t all be needed”, he said.
“Are you something to do with the production?”, asked Annalisa, in the sort of questioning tone that only she might use in such circumstances.
“Stephen’s the playwright”, I said to her, “so I think he knows what he’s talking about”.
“Thank you”, I said to Stephen.
“That’s all right”, said Stephen. Then he said, “I wish they wouldn’t put my picture on the programme. I don’t like being recognised”.
“I’d have recognised you anyway”, I said.
Stephen Poliakoff half-smiled at me.
I really liked this play and the production. It is not Poliakoff’s finest, but it was a very interesting play, covering (as Poliakoff often does) societal issues and family issues in one fell swoop.
Superb cast, including my first live look at several truly excellent stage folk: Michael Pennington, Simon Russell Beale, Lesley Sharpe and Ralph Fiennes to name but four.
Annalisa was not as keen on this piece as I was. To be honest, she wasn’t very interested in theatre, but tended to come along to stuff I’d booked with Bobbie in mind if/when Bobbie wasn’t available.
I think it might have been during the interval of this one, in reference to a family row during the piece, that Annalisa commented, “I don’t much like this sort of drama – I can get all this at home.
It reminded me of one of my favourite Peter Cook quotes:
I go to the theatre to be entertained… I don’t want to see plays about rape, sodomy and drug addiction… I can get all that at home.
Playing With Trains did not have rape, sodomy or drug addiction as far as I recall. I do also remember suggesting that Annalisa keep her opinions to herself until we were clear of The Pit given that it was a preview night and it wasn’t the cast and crew’s fault that I had taken a guest who was not so keen on theatre.
We legged it across town to Daniel Scordel’s pad on Trinity Road, where the party was in full swing once we got there. I think Daniel was going out with Maz (Marianne Tudor Craig) by then, but I think that relationship was still quite new. I don’t remember much about the party other than it being rather a good one.
I do specifically remember Daniel’s kid sister, who was I think 17 or 18 at that time, grooving to a particular dance tune that I liked but did not recognise, so I asked her, after the record finished, what it was.
“You haven’t heard of it?” she said, “but it’s been in the charts for weeks. You’re sad”.
Billington On Macbeth Sat, Dec 18, 1993 – 26 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Coveney On Macbeth Sun, Dec 19, 1993 – 58 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
