Police sirens wailed from all directions as I took the bus up Kingsland Road to Stoke Newington and the Arcola theatre. Shortly afterwards the road was sealed off as it emerged there'd been yet another murder in the area. Just right to put me in the mood for this revival of Thomas Kyd's gory Elizabethan tragedy, which ends with bodies littering the stage. This was a play that quickly became a popular classic and had great influence on Shakespeare, and I can understand why. There are scenes which clearly look forward to Hamlet and Macbeth, lots of raw emotion and violence, some grand guignol horror and an evil villain. The final scene is a play-within-a-play in which the revenger Hieronimo slaughters his victims for real -- a fantastic dramatic device which Shakespeare obviously admired, taking elements from it into the play scene and the final duel scene in Hamlet. It's the Elizabethan equivalent of a good gangster movie and well suited to a modern dress production in the gloomy low-ceiling warehouse space that is the Arcola.
Unfortunately this production by Doublethink Theatre that leaves a lot to be desired. Dominic Rowan (excellent as a deadpan Touchstone at Shakespeare's Globe this year in As You Like It) is badly miscast as Hieronimo the avenger. There's a wide variation in the quality of the acting between experienced professionals such as Keith Bartlett, Guy Williams and Richard Clews on the one hand and some of the younger cast members who gabble their lines. It's quite an achievement not to be audible in an intimate theatre like this, but I found myself straining to make out what some of them were saying. On the plus side there's a young actor from southern Africa (I guess Swaziland from his CV) named Msimisi Dlamini who manages to be both audible and convincing as Balthazar. The direction by Mitchell Moreno is full of 'look-at-me-aren't-I-clever' elements borrowed from here there and everywhere, and lacks the pared-down simplicity that Declan Donnellan manages to achieve in his modern dress productions of Shakespeare. A dead body surrounded by red roses is a cliche which has been done lots of times before. There's plenty of realistic fake blood in this show, but when the villain Lorenzo is killed the director and designer can't resist the temptation to change the visual style and introduce trailing red ribbons as well. You might call it doublethink but I couldn't possibly comment.
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