Peter Viney's Blog

Don Carlos
by Friedrich Schiller
Translated by Robert David MacDonald

Directed by Gadi Roll
Lighting design by Jonathan Samuels
Sound design by Gadi Roll
Set and costume by Rosanna Vize 

Ara Theatre Company
Nuffield City Theatre co-production with Exeter Northcott & Rose Kingston

Nuffield City Theatre
Wednesday 24th October 2018, 14.30

CAST
Alexander Allin – ensemble/ Duke of Feria
Dan Ball – ensemble / The Prior of the Carthusian monastery
Tom Burke – Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa / The Grand Inquisitor
Guy Dennys- ensemble / Don Luis Mercado, physician to the queen
Alexandra Dowling – The Princess of Eboli
Darrell D’Silva – Philip II, King of Spain
Kelly Gough- Elizabeth of Valois, Queen of Spain, wife of Phillip, stepmother to Don Carlos
Jason Morell – Domingo, confessor to the King
Vinta Morgan – Duke of Alba, military leader
Euan Shannon – ensemble, a page to the queen
Samuel Valentine – Don Carlos, son of Phillip II and Crown Prince
Stephen Ventura – Count Lerma, commander of the King’s guard
Flip Webster- Duchess of Olivarez, lady-in-waiting to the Queen

This is our first visit to the new (well, virtually a year old) Nuffield City Theatre in Southampton, taking over from the old Nuffield Campus Theatre on major productions. It has two of the essentials the campus theatre lacks: lots of restaurants nearby, and the large city centre car parks (though all are quite a walk). On the other hand, their own bar / café had a poor selection of three tired sandwiches and a couple of muffins. The question is whether it will get the other thing the campus theatre lacks: an audience. The Nuffield (Campus) was packed out in the 70s and 80s when we were regulars, but not since. It’s good to see the Nuffield back as a producing theatre too (in alliance with Exeter Northcott and Rose Kingston). This is on top of a building with a huge tapas bar below. It’s a long way up the stairs to the theatre. It’s the right size inside, and it looks flexible in arrangement. Ladies loos are very good (the first theatre check).

I swear theatres are working through Michael Billington’s 101 Greatest Plays because here’s another one, Don Carlos, and it’s in the Robert David MacDonald translation that was a British success twenty years ago. The other Schiller in the book, Mary Stuart was running in London earlier this year (a revival of the Almeida 2016-17 production). We missed it.

We’ve also been working through the cast of The Musketeers on stage. Two are here … Tom Burke and Alexandra Dowling. Strike was a favourite TV serial with Tom Burke too.

Tom Burke (Marquis of Posa) and Sam Valentine (Don Carlos)

The play was finished by Schiller in 1787, just two years before the French Revolution. Schiller had spent five years writing it, and set his “wind of change of nationalism” story back two hundred years for safety.  The political issue is the Netherlands / Flanders / the Flemish seeking independence from the Spanish Empire of Philip II. If only they’d stuck to just one name (Flanders – The Netherlands – The Flemish) for a general audience.

The romantic issue is that Don Carlos is the Crown Prince, the son of the King, Philip II. His fiancée, Elizabeth of Valois, married Philip in a forced political alliance, and is now his stepmother. It’s a distorted mirror image of Hamlet. The Princess of Eboli is an important addition to the mix, intent on Don Carlos, and also used to steal important letters from the queen.

The Princess of Eboli (Alexandra Dowling) hopes to appeal to Don Carlos. Who might well be mad as he resists.

The action pre-dates Philip II’s Spanish Armada by twenty years, and the Duke of Alba features. He was known for his brutality leading the Spanish army against the Dutch revolt. This was open war by 1568. The historical theme is that Posa wants Don Carlos to go to the Netherlands in Alba’s place and seek a peaceful settlement. Philip II imprisoned the real Don Carlos in 1568, and Elizabeth of Valois died in childbirth in 1568, though that’s not her fate in the play. Historical Carlos and Elizabeth had originally been betrothed, and she did indeed marry his father in 1559. She was fourteen years old. Philip II had been in two minds after the death of his wife, Mary Tudor, the queen of England. He had proposed to Queen Elizabeth I next, but when she delayed he switched to a French alliance by marrying Elizabeth of Valois instead. The death of Don Carlos in captivity inspired Schiller’s play, which in turn became Verdi’s opera.

The stage. Kelly Gough as Elizabeth

Given the richness of Spanish 16th century garb, modern dress is disappointing The stage is stripped right back to its matt black walls on all three sides. Right back to the control ropes, the back wall. Set design? What set design? There is none, just a few assorted dark grey chairs and one red carpet. Nor much costume design. Black clothes. The only flashes of colour are that red carpet, and a flash of Philip II’s coat lining. Period. The set and costume designer is irrelevant. What there is, is lighting design by Jonathan Samuels.

Darrell d’Silva as King Philip II. Samuel Valentine as Don Carlos, his son

Throughout, we have portable lights moved around between scenes by four operatives, on a bare stage. It is an enormous constraint, as the actors spend so much time with their profile to the audience, totally static, finding their light. They stand square to each other, side on to us.

However, this production has a major intellectual point here (OK. intellectual = possibly pretentious). The designer (who designed very little) says:

If purer humanity is the goal, let’s create purer theatre. This meant stripping away architecture, painted scenery and other fakery and instead only telling this story with the bare bones of what is required. If the actor needs to sit, then we give them a chair. If we need to see them we give them light … The idea of light quickly took on its own meaning so if you put one bright theatre light on a stand and shine it in someone’s face, you are immediately dealing with something harsh, powerful and uncompromising … a little bit like Phillip’s harsh kingdom.
Rosanna Vize, programme notes

Stripping away fakery? Hang on, Tom Burke and Darren d’Silva are ACTORS playing a role. That’s fakery, obviously. Does everyone wear these black suits off stage? So what do you mean? What theatre isn’t “fakery”?

Vinta Morgan as the Duke of Alba, Darrell D’Silva as Philip II who has just thrown his toys out of the pram. NB. D’Silva isn’t REALLY angry with Vinta Morgan. He’s faking it. It’s called ‘acting.’

Go on …

Ara Theatre Company was established by Gadi and myself to create work that combines emotional complexity and stylised staging. We believe that theatre which asserts itself as different in kind from the naturalism of television and film will prove vital in sustaining the art form.
Tom Burke, programme notes

OK, I don’t agree. The result is people standing stock still in dull costumes to stay in the light, side profile to the audience, then speaking way too fast. This is indeed the Grotowski stuff (Towards a Poor Theatre) that I had to read in the 60s and never appreciated. At the opposite end of the scale, the Cirque du Soleil’s ultra-elaborate “LOVE” is one of the best things I’ve ever seen, and that’s been running for years at eye-watering prices too. But Don Carlos at £15 each for a matinee is the best theatrical bargain we’ve had this year in money terms. And I’ll admit that the focus on acting is indeed powerful.

Kelly Gough as Elizabeth of Valois, Queen of Spain

Yes, they speak way too fast … not all of them, but certainly Samuel Valentine as Don Carlos, and Kelly Gough as Elizabeth. At the start , it’s as if you put on a 33 rpm record at 45 rpm. If you have learned blank verse, you end up being able to do it incredibly fast. I can do Hamlet’s to be or not to be speech at extremely high speed. I know it backwards. Here, I don’t know the text, and it was taken much, much too fast by Samuel Valentine. I wanted to shout, ‘SLOW DOWN … just listen to Tom Burke, because he knows how to phrase it and point it and pace it!’  It’s not as familiar as Shakespeare. I only knew the bare outline of the plot. Those long initial speeches are vital. Fortunately, articulation, projection and volume were all good, so you eventually learned to listen to Don Carlos’s gabbled lines. What was he doing? Was it trying to compensate for those long lighting changes? Was it trying to reduce the running time (the play was at least 30 minutes longer than it needed to be)? Was it trying to get rid of the matinee audience as fast as you can? In spite of an impassioned performance, with red hair (very obviously) channelling Prince Harry, I thought he “blew” many of his lines in gabble and it affected actors around him who started belting along at his speed, especially Elizabeth (Kelly Gough).

We used to have high speed tape copiers for dubbing our educational audio tapes. The guy doing the copying (an old friend) soon learnt he could understand speech perfectly at double the speed, and eventually, he could just about understand speech at four times the speed. This would have been a useful skill here. It meant that we adjusted to his high speed delivery eventually.

The star of the show is Darrell d’Silva’s leonine mane of silver hair as King Philip II. Easily, the most interesting visual thing of the whole play (NOTE: theatre should be a VISUAL medium too). Full marks to the hair stylist who should be credited up there with the designer. D’Silva has an incredibly hard job, mainly at full on anger right through the play. He’s extremely good.

Michael Billington says of the play:

As a five act tragedy in blank verse, it was for a long time greeted by the British theatre with the studied indifference reserved for major European drama.
Michael Billington, The 101 Greatest Plays

Is that true? Moliere and Chekhov seem to have put the bums on seats for years. Even Ibsen does. As does Florian Zeller recently. Is it European theatre? The British seem to go for French and Russian theatre with ease, but the German classics do leave them cold. Brecht is not for us. In this three hour play, there is not a single smile, titter or chuckle. Even in the deepest tragedy, the British, French or Russian playwright has us smile at this one’s pomposity, laugh at that one’s pretension. Schiller’s play is bursting at the seams with romantic angst, drama, anger, venom and tragedy, but has not even an iota of humour. It is 100% po-faced. That’s not British (nor French) style. The Stage reviewed it at Exeter and said:

Why these compelling, if offbeat, performances are interspersed with histrionics is, however, a mystery. Three death/fainting collapses are so overdramatic and mistimed that they elicit audible sniggering from the audience.

Not so at Southampton. They’ve probably improved the timing, because nary a snigger was heard.

Darrell d’Silva as Phillip II. The Leonine mane is the star of the entire show.

MUSIC

As with found popular music, I am appalled that the brilliant modern classical musical selections are neither listed, nor credited. The director was responsible for the sound design. It was a superb selection too. At my count, Max Richter’s On The Nature of Daylight from The Blue Notebooks appeared four times during lighting changes. It was always a glorious interlude and a welcome pause. So why not credit it? It was also used in The Globe’s Romeo & Juliet in 2017. It’s a fantastic piece, one of my favourites. It’s on the Shutter Island soundtrack too. Give it the due it deserves. I suspect other stuff was Max Richter too. I wrote this with The Blue Notebooks playing along in the background. Thanks for sending me back to the album.

Karen reckoned four star, praising the six lead actors as fitting together like a jigsaw.  I reckoned three star. I would have stopped both Don Carlos and Elizabeth right away for excessive gabbling, and said, ‘Start again, and speak at normal speed’. While the lighting was fascinating to me, and very well executed, too often it glued the actors to a spot and rendered them way too static. And the direct face-on light at close proximity must have been awful for the actors’ eyes.

Let’s see the hair again

But I thought Phillip II,  the Marquis of Posa, the Princess of Eboli and the Duke of Alba all superb. Brilliant acting. The bare stage concept was strong, not my thing, but I like a concept. Three star

***

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

Reviews are all Exeter. I suspect they’d tightened up some aspects by Southampton.

three star
Francesca Peschier, The Stage (Exeter review)  ***

The language, dress and scenography are achingly modern, but Roll’s direction is distinctly odd in its stylised anti-naturalism. Using Vize’s set like a chessboard, the power dynamics of the characters and the court are played out almost entirely on the horizontal in constant diametrical opposition. When not staring each other down in the manner of some dystopian western, the characters move across the stage’s squares in stiff grid-like patterns.

two star
Kate Malby, The Guardian (Exeter review) **

Burke, despite his face adorning the posters, has cast himself in the roles of Posa and the Grand Inquisitor. It’s a smart doubling: the Inquistor, all menace and religious obscurantism, sneers at the “vanity of Reason”. Here is the true duality of the play. A snarling Samuel Valentine takes on Carlos but is always emotionally two lines ahead of the script. In Roll’s black-box production – with its interrogation-cell lighting and Matrix costumes – the cast spit their lines into each other’s faces but rarely out into the audience. Kelly Gough (as Elizabeth) and Darrell D’Silva (as Philip) add presence and dignity, but they’re as static as chess pieces. Deeply frustrating.

one star
Sam Marlowe, The Times (Exeter review) *

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

SAMUEL VALENTINE
Romeo & Juliet, Kenneth Branagh Company 2018 (Friar Lawrence)
Romeo & Juliet, Globe 2015 (Romeo)

DARRELL D’SILVA
Woyzeck, Old Vic, 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bath 2016 (Theseus / Oberon)

VINTA MORGAN
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bath 2016 (Snout/Wall)
The Merchant of Venice, Almeida 2015 (Prince of Morocco)
Richard III, Trafalgar Studio, 2014 (Edward)

ALEXANDRA DOWLING
While The Sun Shines, Rattigan, Bath 2016 (Lady Elizabeth)