Scottish Youth Theatre, Glasgow
3 stars
By opting to tackle the holy trinity of Shakespeare's history plays,
RSAMD's final year acting students, under the guidance of the annual
Bard in the Botanics summer festival, have set themselves a huge task.
Yet with three directors at the helm, the cast of twenty-one survived
Saturday's seven hour marathon with aplomb, even if their characters
didn't.
Major parts are split throughout, with some canny cross-gender casting
making Amy J Ludwigsen's Buckingham look part Brief Encounter, part
Bond villainess. So where in the Marc Silberschatz directed first part
Kevin Leask's Henry V1 is a precocious bible-clutching cherub, by
Jennifer Dick's take on the second play Adam Donaldson's version is
savvier if just as useless. Similarly, Rachel Handshaw's coquettish
Queen Margaret matures into the voluminous orange wig sported by
Amandine Vincent and, in Gordon Barr's final part, the even steelier
Pola Anton as she seeks revenge.
There are some inventive directorial flourishes, such as Suffolk and
Margaret adjusting their clothing as they slip through the garden
following an adulterous tryst in part one. Dick creates a near
mathematically choreographed series of tableaux in part two, each one
punctuated by great physical chorales pulsed by off-stage drum-rolls.
And in the 1930s noir of part three, the opening snapshot style group
shot of the latest coronation is echoed at the end of the play by
Richmond flanked by all the dead wronged by Richard as he prepares for
battle. When they circle him, it's as if all his demons have been made
flesh, and his sword is left flailing at thin air in a mighty stab at
stateliness that moves outdoors when Bard in the Botanics opens next
month.
The Herald, May 30th 2011
ends
3 stars
By opting to tackle the holy trinity of Shakespeare's history plays,
RSAMD's final year acting students, under the guidance of the annual
Bard in the Botanics summer festival, have set themselves a huge task.
Yet with three directors at the helm, the cast of twenty-one survived
Saturday's seven hour marathon with aplomb, even if their characters
didn't.
Major parts are split throughout, with some canny cross-gender casting
making Amy J Ludwigsen's Buckingham look part Brief Encounter, part
Bond villainess. So where in the Marc Silberschatz directed first part
Kevin Leask's Henry V1 is a precocious bible-clutching cherub, by
Jennifer Dick's take on the second play Adam Donaldson's version is
savvier if just as useless. Similarly, Rachel Handshaw's coquettish
Queen Margaret matures into the voluminous orange wig sported by
Amandine Vincent and, in Gordon Barr's final part, the even steelier
Pola Anton as she seeks revenge.
There are some inventive directorial flourishes, such as Suffolk and
Margaret adjusting their clothing as they slip through the garden
following an adulterous tryst in part one. Dick creates a near
mathematically choreographed series of tableaux in part two, each one
punctuated by great physical chorales pulsed by off-stage drum-rolls.
And in the 1930s noir of part three, the opening snapshot style group
shot of the latest coronation is echoed at the end of the play by
Richmond flanked by all the dead wronged by Richard as he prepares for
battle. When they circle him, it's as if all his demons have been made
flesh, and his sword is left flailing at thin air in a mighty stab at
stateliness that moves outdoors when Bard in the Botanics opens next
month.
The Herald, May 30th 2011
ends
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