Peter Viney's Blog

Tristan & Yseult 2017
Kneehigh at The Globe

Writers – Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy
Adaptor and Director – Emma Rice
Composer – Stu Barker
Designer – Bill Mitchell
Shakespeare’s Globe, London
Saturday 24th June 2017, 14.00

CAST

Niall Ashdown – Brangian
Stu Barker – Musician
Omari Douglas – Love Spotter / Animator
Tom Jackson Greaves – Love Spotter / Animator
Kyle Lima – Frocin
Dominic Marsh – Tristan
Pat Moran – Musician
Justin Radford – Musician
Mike Shepherd – King Mark
Hannah Vassallo – Yseult
Elizabeth Westcott – Musician
Kirsty Woodward –Whitehands

Emma Rice’s flagship production dates back to 2003, when she played the role of Whitehands herself, and had its major revival from 2013 to 2015. Tristan & Yseult is said to be one reason why Emma Rice got the job of artistic director at The Globe, so they shouldn’t have been surprised by electric instruments, recorded music, modern dress and cross-dressed characters, though only two women in the cast is a long way from her much trumpeted aim for 50:50 gender mix on stage. Kneehigh theatre worked collaboratively with blurred lines between writers, adaptor, director and actors.

The tickets add “2017” to the play’s title. Dominic Maxwell said:

This production is one of the masterpieces of 21st century theatre.

It’s great to see such enthusiasm, though there are 83 years left to go.

The circular stage sitting on The Globe stage

This is a touring  production with its own two level circular stage and platforms, but it fits well onto the Globe thrust stage, and I would have thought a proscenium stage on tour would have constrained things. The lower circle “runway” around a circular stage seems popular this year.

The exuberance and energy levels were pitched just right for an enthusiastic Saturday afternoon audience, and it was packed to the doors in the pit. Unfortunately, most of the pictures online are at night and I suspect at other venues on the tour. There are none of the Love Spotters, who made great use of The Globe’s size in wandering around the inner stage … in many ways, the Globe was ideal for it.

Whitehands (Kitsty Woodward)

Everyone in the cast has to double as the Love Spotters, a chorus in anoraks with binoculars, like bird watchers. They are part of “The Club of The Unloved” along with the band. They’re led by Whitehands, an immaculately dressed lady in pale primrose skirt suit and hat (and white gloves), There is a general 60s feel with a bar on one side, and an early 60s record player and LPs on the other. The LP at the front is by Yma Sumac, lounge exotica of the late 1950s in a modern pressing. Pity, I could have given them an original with a far better sleeve.

Record player with LP

The traditional story has been cut to the main points, with dragons, lepers and such excised. King Mark of Cornwall presides over a 5th century realm rich in both tin and fish, which proved a useful combination in later centuries.  He has a penchant for speaking in verse. He is visited by Tristan from Brittany, a friendly country (Breton and Cornish are related Celtic languages).  Tristan speaks French on arrival, and has to be urged by the love spotters to speak English. Morhauld, the Irish king arrives in the pit with his two henchman and announces he is taking over Cornwall. A terrific stage fight ensues with loud music and drum punctuation, all live for the punches and kicks … done with precision by the drummer, and this is really hard to do, Tristan saves King Mark and manages to kill Morhauld,

Mark reckons that he might as well take what he can from the defeated and plucks a locket with red-gold hair from Morhauld’s neck. “My sister! gasps Morhauld with his dying breath. So Tristan is sent off to Ireland to find the sister and bring her back as Mark’s bride and Queen. He finds her, they take an instant liking to each other. Then Yseult, the sister, realizes that Tristan killed her brother.

On the boat: Tristan (Dominic Marsh) & Yseult (Hannah Vassallo)

On the boat back to Cornwall, Brangian, the maid to Yseult is with them, trying to act as chaperone. After a session mixing up love potions with wine, they have an ecstatic series of embraces on wires. Brangian (Niall Ashdown in minimal drag) has to struggle to keep the lovers apart on the boat. And fails. Back in Cornwall, the wedding is set up. Brilliant business with white balloons. Act Two presents them with a problem. Yseult is no longer a virgin, and is faced with her wedding night with King Mark. She persuades the virginal Brangian to take her place … after all both are wearing white slips and Mark is blindfolded. Hilariously and also sadly, Brangian enjoys the encounter on his / her mistress’s behalf.

Frocin (Kyle Lima) was the king’s best friend until Tristan supplanted him. He plots to catch Tristan and Yseult making love (yet more tremendously funny business with wires and a Polaroid camera). The lovers are banished by the heartbroken Mark. A few twists and turns … Tristan and Yseult find that with the love potion long worn off, love has gone. Time passes. We find Tristan, still suffering from the wound Morhauld gave him, has married (no plot spoilers), but is dying. He is waiting for Yseult’s boat. If she is aboard it will have white sails, if not black … massive Wagner soundtrack … to the end.

The production has everything. There is dancing, including Irish dance and break dance, throughout. All excellent choreography and execution. The music ranges from Wagner to punk to 60s pop to Celtic. I think that when recorded Wagner was used, they added to it live (as they do with Max Richter in the current Globe Romeo & Juliet), The doleful chorus is a forerunner to Emma Rice’s rude mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2016, when they were portrayed as Globe ushers.

I loved the assigned roles. Four of them are fourth wall breakers and address the audience … Kyle Lima as Froclin; Niall Ashdown in all three of his roles as Love Spotter, Irish King and Brangian in drag; Mike Shepherd as a Love Spotter (but not when he was King Mark) and Kirsty Woodward as Whitehands. They pass the baton between them on audience interaction. It’s something we used to work hard on in our ELT shows, and I’ve rarely seen it done so well. Niall Ashdown’s drag Brangian is a particularly funny “only just drag”. No wig, headscarf applied on stage, lipstick only put on for the wedding night. It’s a lovely interpretation, and extremely funny, as was his Irish king (while still alive).

Then Tristan (Dominic Marsh) and Yseult (Hannah Vassalo) are played romantically straight and stay in character. Among a cast of wonderful dancers, Hannah Vassalo stands out as having that undefinable golden dancing ability. She also has to run and jump a lot, and in a further echo of this year’s Romeo & Juliet, she has to do a couple of apparently unnecessary circles of the entire stage before getting into position … but she runs with style and grace. When Mike Shepherd is in his King Mark guise, he also plays straight. You need the contrast among the mayhem, music, interaction, and it enhances the humour too.

King Mark (Mike Shephard)

Omari Douglas and Tom Jackson Greaves are basically Love Spotters, but also “brutes” fighting on both sides, dancers, and “animators.” The last means operating the wires for Tristan, Yseult, Froclin and Whitehands, as well as some birds. Their fight scenes are outstandingly athletic.

It is a tight ensemble production, and the musicians are part of it … the harp v dulcimer shouting match was a joy. Even Yseult has to be an anorak Love Spotter … all the Love Spotters have to dance awkwardly, and there is so much music they have to do a lot of this.

It’s a definitive five star production. It’s finished at The Globe, this was the last day, but continues to tour. Massive applause, three curtain calls.

Overall: *****

MUSIC

The band: The Club of The Unloved (plus Kyle Lima on sax)

They list the music in detail in the programme even including the writers and publishers! Wonderful.  I wanted to know what those stirring Wagner Tristan und Isolde bits were.

They don’t list the three songs done as a pre-show before each act though (they included Crazy, Only The Lonely and Anyone Who Had A Heart.

TOUR

It’s on its way to Theatre Clwyd, Bristol Old Vic and Galway Arts Festival.

PROGRAMMES

Annoying. The Globe shop only had the Tour programme which I duly bought. But inside the theatre, they had the specific Globe version on sale, and I saw from our neighbours that it included a writers’ interview, as well as being in the Globe format. So I ended up having to buy the two. They explained that they were running short of the better Globe one. OK, but then sell that first, then move onto the tour one.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

Funny, but Ms Rice’s senior critics didn’t turn up for this one.
5
Tim Auld, The Telegraph *****
Paul Taylor, The Independent, *****
Dominic Maxwell, The Times, *****
Tracy Sinclair, The Stage *****
4
Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard ****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ****

EMMA RICE ON THIS BLOG
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic