I said in the log, which is almost to be expected with a cast as fine as this under Deborah Warner.
This was an evening at The National with Bobbie. I have subsequently seen a good “Good Person” at The Orange Tree with Janie too, but this Olivier production was especially fine in my view.
My log suggests that we thought this production was good. I’m not a huge fan of Wesker’s plays; in fact this one sticks in my memory as probably the most interesting of all those I have seen and read.
This was the famous (or perhaps infamous) National Theatre production of Hamlet which took Daniel Day-Lewis to the very edge of reason and from which he quit part way through the run.
I went very early in the run – in fact it might even have been a preview – with Annalisa. I suspect that I had booked the thing with Bobbie in mind, but so long before the appointed date that Bobbie could no longer make it.
Let’s just say that, back then, I thought of Shakespeare as more Bobbie’s thing than Annalisa’s thing. Annalisa has latterly assured me that theatre, including Shakespeare, was very much her thing.
Anyway, I recall that we sat right at the front of one of those side wedges in the Olivier – you are very close to the action there, especially when the action is on your side of the stage.
I also recall that Daniel Day Lewis was a very wet Hamlet – by which I mean sweating and spitting his lines. Annalisa remarked afterwards that we should have taken umbrellas with us had we known.
It was a superb production, with a great many big names and several names that weren’t big then but went on to be big. National productions were a bit like that in those days – some still are I suspect.
I was motivated to write up this theatre visit while sitting at Lord’s in September 2018 watching, for the first time, Ethan Bamber bowl live. His father, David, was Horatio in this Hamlet production, nearly 30 years earlier.
Other big names/fine performances included Judi Dench, John Castle, Michael Bryant, Oliver Ford Davies & Stella Gonet. A young Jeremy Northam had a small part in the version we saw but stepped up to the plate when Daniel Day-Lewis walked out. Later in the run, Ian Charleson took on the role to much acclaim, just before he died.
I think this was still quite early in Richard Eyre’s tenure at the National and he directed this one himself, extremely well.
My only other recollection is a quote that Annalisa picked up from an American visitor to the National, who told his wife that he didn’t think all that much of the play – “too many of the lines were clichés”. I guess you can’t please everybody.
Postscript: An Enthusiast From Across The Pond Sought Help…
…in March 2024 I received some unusual correspondence from a gentleman in the USA, wondering whether I still had the programme (or playbill in his terms) as he was keen to see Daniel Day-Lewis’s biography notes from that production.
I have mentioned before that Ogblog serves as a fifth emergency service on occasions and this felt like such an occasion. No sirens or speeding vehicles through the streets of London needed, but I fortuitously was able to lay my hands on this particular programme with relative ease, having not yet returned that batch to deep storage.
David Hare plays have a tendency to irritate me, especially those plays that seem to come at moral and/or political issues with some preachy certainty – even if I agree with Hare’s position, which often I do.
I recall The Secret Rapture having enough moral dilemma and ambiguity about Thatcherism to keep the thought and concentration going throughout the play and for some time afterwards too.
They made a movie of this play a few years later…mostly different cast…
…I don’t really recognise the play I saw from this trailer at all:
In short, I remember thinking the play/production that we saw was very good. I went with Bobbie.
I’m not sure what we did afterwards; perhaps we ate out or perhaps I prepared some food for afterwards, as I was in the mode to do that in those early days at Clanricarde Gardens.
This production started its life at the Cottesloe, then went on tour and then returned to the National at the Olivier. Bobbie and I caught it on its return.
I recall not much liking this play. We had seen a cast comprising mostly this ensemble perform The Tempest some months earlier, which I had loved. I think it was that experience that drew us to Cymbeline.
I also realised by then that I prefer smaller spaces than the Olivier – there was a comparatively impersonal feel to the Cymbeline and I remember wondering whether I would have liked it more in the Cottesloe.
Still, it was a fine production with an excellent cast. I wonder what Bobbie thought of it and/or recalls about it?
Below is Michael Billington’s Guardian review of Cymbeline:
This was my last week working for Newman Harris, I was doing exam marking for Financial Training college to make a few extra bucks and on the preceding Monday my parents went on holiday. How do I remember all that?:
I rated this production very good. I think we benefited from seeing The Tempest in the intimate environment of the Cottesloe – certainly when compared with Cybeline at the Olivier.
Not sure what we did afterwards – the diary might have some info on that, which I shall add in the fullness of time if it does.
Billington on Sichuan Thu, Nov 30, 1989 – 31 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Ratcliffe on Sichuan Sun, Dec 3, 1989 – 43 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
