The Battle of the Bards
The Listener, 12th
January 1989, Robert Gore-Langton
The winter of
discontent to about to take hold with a vengeance. Robert Gore-Langton studies
the invasion of the History Plays – and talks to the English Shakespeare
Company’s fearless Michael Pennington about his irreverent, updated Wars of the
Roses.
London will soon be awash with battles, feuding, medieval bishops, knights, nobles, the kings and conference tables of Shakespeare’s history Plays. The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the English Shakespeare Company (ESC) have come up with all-day marathons. The West End is fielding Derek Jacobi as Richard III to follow up his Richard II. There’s even a new movie version of ‘Henry V’ in the can (starring, and directed by, Kenneth Branagh), scheduled for release in the autumn. Some argue that the spate of histories is a coincidence – others that a heightened sense of soap has fashioned a new taste for such serial dramas.
From the point of view of the companies, two major
history cycles has to be bad programming. There is only so much box-office
mileage in the obscurer plays, especially the three parts of ‘Henry VI’ – the
existence of which most theatregoers are no more than vaguely aware. The RSC
transfers its show ‘The Plantagenets’ (as the company has collectively titles
things) to the Barbican, not long after the ESC’s package (called the ‘Wars of
the Roses’, an old RSC name) rolls up at the Old Vic. The RSC is pitching for
cult-show status, while the ESC arrives with glowing testimonials dating from
the start of its trip round England in 1985.
English theatre managements seldom take much notice
of other people’s programming, and the planning of new seasons tends to be done
in a vacuum. With a resolute classicist running the Old Vic, the Royal Court
doing occasional revivals, and the National Theatre experimenting with yet more
Shakespeare, there is a case to be made for production quotas on the more
overworked masterpieces. Witness the absurdity of five major ‘Tempests’ last
year.
The RSC can be exempted from worrying about rival
plans as far as Shakespeare is concerned, and it’s more than ten years since it
last produced the ‘Henry VI’ trilogy. At the same time, the ESC can claim to
have sparked off the current Histories trend, and the company was in any case
born to tour. It’s ‘Henry IV’ and ‘V’ cycle has recently been augmented by the
Richard plays and the ‘Henry VIs’, to the point where it now showcases all the
kingly chronicles in a seven-play road show (with the three parts of ‘Henry
VI’, as in ‘The Plantagenets’, reprocessed into two).
Having only had two productions of the ‘Henry VI’
plays this century, Londoners are suddenly landed with two whole Saturdays of
them within one mile and a few weeks of each other. What has emerged is fascinating
for the divergence in styles. The RSC production, which might be subtitled ‘A
Family Affair’, is bloody but plush – a medieval saga of a country divided. The
ESC version is a scruffy, irreverent and updated look at war, imperialism and
patriotism. “’Ere we go, ‘ere we go” is more the flavour here.
The English Shakespeare Company is the brainchild
of ‘wildcat’ director Michael Bogdanov and actor Michael Pennington, a former
leading light at the RSC. Both had previously worked together at the National.
“The ESC came out of a drink,” says Pennington in the company’s tiny office off
Oxford Street. “We thought of a project, and suddenly the money was there – our
bluff was called.”
Three years later, and the company is still without
any settled future, funded instead on a project-by-project basis with
sponsorship from Allied Irish Bank. “But don’t forget that we are at liberty to
stop,” insists Pennington. “We could wind it up at any time. The ESC was formed
to solve the touring conundrum, which we’ve done with some style. What we don’t
feel is that we have to go on and on.”
While the RSC now tours regularly, companies such
as Prospect and Compass were, prior to the ESC, the only hope for big-scale
productions to reach the regional reps – where, with few exceptions, dull,
set-book efforts have become the norm. The ESC’s portable theatre is the
essence of its artistic creed, involving a broad populist assault on the plays,
with the minimum of props, design concepts ranging from Quality Street uniforms
to flak jackets and machine-guns, plus a do-as-we-please approach when it comes
to rearrangement of the texts.
Pennington, who describes himself as “a puritan
dressed in circus clothes”, takes the view that there is a clear gap for this
sort of ultra-accessible Shakespeare. Thus, Joan of Arc in ‘Henry VI’ is
‘necklaced’ with a petrol-soaked tyre; Great War trench scenes are juxtaposed
with domestic anarchy led by lager-lout jack Cade; while Richard III operates a
computer, has a Yorkshire accent, and dispenses with “My kingdom for a horse!”
(the army is motorised).
“It’s dangerous,” Pennington admits. “But Michael
Bogdanov has spent 20 years developing a modernist approach, and all the
choices are carefully made. If we have an idea for the play, then it is derived
from the text.” In rough terms, the visual style of the cycle covers a period
from Georgian England through to the present – a span paralleled in the
dramatic time of the texts.
These methods score best on the better histories.
The brilliant work on the ‘Henry IV’ and ‘V’ plays, particularly in the
Eastcheap and Agincourt scenes, is sapped by the narrative sprawl of the
three-into-two ‘Henry VI’. At the tour’s stop in Plymouth, exhaustion was
evident, with the great dramatic climaxes inspiring no peaks of acting. The RSC
version, despite its awful wigs, uneven casting and the drastic editing that
renders everything ‘Jackanory’-simple, still contains some fine performances
and a sense of a shared epic voyage.
Where the ESC succeeds is in creating an energy
that has a direct appeal, and this emerges clearly in ‘Richard III’. For all
the provocative manhandling of the text, proceedings are dominated by Andrew
Jarvis’s all-out performance as Richard. The part of the self-delighting
ironist, with seemingly little concern for the legend attached to the role and
the hump.
The tour has proved hugely successful. Pennington
would never apologise for the doctoring of texts and fancy updating: “In order
to make a young audience aware that the plays are about them and their lives,
we may occasionally bend over and underline a point three times. I’m prepared
to be populist about this. But the verse is well spoken, and there’s a profound
regard for the language.” The language that’s left in, he means.
Is the ESC, though, anything more than Pennington
and Bogdanov? The former is vehement in defending the outfit, which he created
in order to savour some of the company excitement that he felt left the RSC
after the golden mid-seventies. The ESC sports some experienced actors, but no
stars. “I like to think there’s a classical ensemble we have created which no
longer depends on Michael or me,” says Pennington.
The company is now looking for another project and
another director. Bogdanov is in Hamburg as intendant at the
Schauspielhaus, and Pennington, steeped in management, is scouting for someone
to take over (no names are disclosed). He himself will go into the open market
as an actor. The company’s future is uncertain, funding is in the air, but
whomever is approached will be expected to work within, as Pennington puts it,
“the ESC’s tradition of genial iconoclasm”.