Peter Viney's Blog

Adaptor and Director –Emma Rice
Writers –Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy
Bill Mitchell – original set and costume design, refreshed by Vicki Mortimer
Stu Barker- composer
Choreographed by Etta Murfitt

An Emma Rice Company, York Theatre Royal, and Nottingham Playhouse co-production.

Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
Thursday 8th October 2026 14.30

CAST
John Leader- Tristan
Nandi Bhebe – Yeseult
Edward Rowe – King Mark
Matthew Churcher – Frocin
Stephanie Hockley- Whitehands
Tom Fox – Morholt, Brangian
Pat Moran – Love Spotter, Performing MD
Stu Barker – Composer, Love Spotter, Musician
Phillipa Hogg- Love Spotter, Musician
Harry Miller – Love Spotter, Musician
Mary Johnson – Love Spotter, Musician
Jack Heydon – Love Spotter, Brute, Creature of The Forest
Nigel Sudarkasa – – Love Spotter, Brute, Creature of The Forest

SEE ALSO: Tristan & Yseult, The Globe 2017

We decided on Guildford rather than Bath for this tour. Fewer roadworks, much more comfortable theatre. It could fast become a favourite venue, even though it’s 80 miles away (Bath at 65 miles takes much longer). If you pay in advance they reserve a table in the café and they do a decent no frills formica table lunch. Really nice staff and friendly volunteers too.

There’s a consensus that so far this is one of the defining plays of the 21st century, and one of the most influential. According to the programme, this is the EIGHTH production. We saw The Globe production in 2017, but the play originally comes from 2003 and made Emma Rice’s name. It’s partly why she got the ill-fated Globe artistic director job. They should have known that she was not going to meekly follow a blinkered set of strict rules. OK, screwing speakers into the wooden framework was a mistake. Recorded music made hackles rise, but there were a series of splendid and memorable productions there, including the version of this play. It gave way to the dour “director-free” era at The Globe. Fortunately that seems to be dissipating the last couple of years. Also, Emma Rice went on to even more success with her own company.

First thing. We thought 2017 a five star production. Nine years on, in a much smaller space, we thought it even better. We were so much closer to the action and the theatricality works better with stage lighting rather than daylight and open air. We’re also glad we saw in at Guildford rather than Bath, as Bath’s proscenium stage has such strong boundaries. Guildford’s sides disappear, so it’s just one side of the hall.

We noted that the same Yma Sumac “exotica” LP was on the record player at the start.

The concept is that everyone in the cast is a member of The Club Of The Unloved, in nerdy anoraks and balaclavas. They surround this ancient romantic story. There is a great deal of comedy dominating, but within that the three romantic parts, Tristan (John Leader), Yseult (Nandi Bhebe) and King Mark (Edward Rowe) have to play their dramatic parts straight (all three actors don anoraks and join in the comedy in other places).

I will have more to say about the programme, but its major fault is that it doesn’t give a synopsis of the original Tristan & Yseult legend, or rather as they tell it, which might be a tad different.

So here’s the synopsis they should have put in!

King Mark of Cornwall is visited by Tristan from Brittany. Morholt the Irish King invades and declares he now owns Cornwall. There is a fight, Tristan kills Morholt earning King Mark’s gratitude. The dead (or dying) Morholt has a locket with a picture of his sister, Yseult, and a lock of her hair. Mark falls in love with her image.

Tristan is dispatched to fetch her. They take an instant liking to each other, but then she realises he killed her brother. On the boat back to Cornwall, they mix up wine and love potions and a relationship commences. When they get to Cornwall, Mark sets up the wedding, but he will discover that Yseult is not a virgin. She persuades her maid, Brangian, to dress in similar clothes and take her place in the marriage bed. Frocin had been the king’s favourite, supplanted by Tristan. He reveals the Tristan & Yseult romance to King Mark. The lovers are banished. Tristan marries another, but is succumbing to the wound Morholt gave him. He wants to see Yseult who will signal her return in a boat with white sails.

There you go. Just a page. It’s not hard!

It is a festival of what we love about theatre. The choreography (by Emma Rice herself back in 2003) blends dance, fights, acrobatics, somersaults, work suspended on wires.

It is extremely funny. Tom Fox must be best comic acting of the year. he combines Morholt and Brangian. Weirdly, he isn’t full face in the photo gallery. Maybe they want to hold him back. Morholt, dressed in black with two henchmen in black marches through the audience. He bellow, ‘I don’t do audience participation. What don’t I do?’ We all shout out at full volume, ‘Audience participation!’ Then the three prove their ethnicity with some Irish step dance.

The fight between the Irish with Mark, Frocin and Tristan is simply one of the best things you’ll see in the theatre for athleticism, comedy and action. It includes a backward somersault off the centre stage. A good touch throughout is that ‘blood’ is always pieces of scarlet cloth.

Matthew Churcher as Frocin, King Mark’s chamberlain (or whatever) is the other comic role, and he is an amazing dancer as well. His great piece is trying to take a polaroid of Tristan and Yseult having sex to show King Mark, which has him suspended on wires, feet against the central pole with a Polaroid flash camera. All precious stuff.

King Mark speaks in verse with touches of Cornish. Tristan tries to speak French but is made to speak English. As above, these three roles are played dramatically.

Even so one of the funniest (and brilliantly choreographed) scenes is when Tristan and Yseult are mixing up the bottle of wine and the bottle of love potion to music ending up with their falling in love dance on wires above the stage.

Both lovers are tremendous in their roles, acting, singing, dancing, acrobatics combine.

Then Tom Fox also has the role of the maid Brangian, in headscarf and frock. He appears in the second half singing Raye’s Where Is My Husband?The concept is always that Brangian is a man dressed up as a woman. I won’t say “in drag” because that suggest elaboration. This is not even Monty Python woman or pantomime dame. Just a headscarf and a frock does the job. There is a bad wig when the headscarf comes off. He has to wear an identical white shift for the wedding night as Yseult, and a dab of perfume and lipstick suffices for the rest.

It’s hard to believe but as a bloke in minimal costume playing a woman, he gets poignancy out of the marriage night and its aftermath when Yseult replaces him. Pulling the “Aaah!” factor dressed like that is comic genius.

Edward Rowe’s King Mark seems genuinely in love with Yseult.

Music:

They seamlessly blend recordings (Wagner from Tristan und Isolde, Nick Cave) with live performers onstage. The musicians act, the actors play musis. So Tom Fox has plays accordion as well as being the star comic part. Nandi Bhebe as Yseult sings a major song, while playing acoustic bass.

Stephanie Hockley as Whitehands turns up in the musician’s gallery to play bass guitar. We also see virtuosity- as well as guitar, bass, drums we have violin, trumpet, accordion, ukuleles.

It’s what I tend to call the “Watermill style” of actor-musicians and musician-actors, though rightly it is the “Tristan & Yseult” style.

They perform a couple of songs while the audience is coming in. I wish people had stopped chattering through the first two, as I wanted to listen. It comes together with the opening number, Love Hurts (a hit for The Everly Brothers in 1960, but with other major versions by Roy Orbison, Nazareth, Jim Capaldi). The audience did at least sit up and listen after the interval to a sublime rendition of Without You (initially by Badfinger, made famous by Nillsson, then Mariah Carey). Why am I listing this? (OK, I have a music website). These were performed live. Then the recording of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Sweetheart Come was played. Yes, I am about to get on a hobby horse. The Nick Cave recording was several minutes of stage time. The song is just under 5 minutes, and I don’t know it well enough to say whether they played it all. But my hobby horse: It doesn’t get a credit in the programme. I note that in 2017 I praised them listing songs, performers and music publishers in the programme. Why not here? What about Boudleaux Bryant (Love Hurts) or Pete Hams and Tom Evans (Without You)? They were significant contributions. Even more so was a great dance number that is familiar, but I can’t place the title in my head. The programme is a long list of fulsome credits for everyone in the company. Credit the songwriters. Tell us what bits of Wagner were used.

BUT the programme is one of the poorest this year. No synopsis, no discussion, no background. Just detailed cast credits.

Never mind. It got a spontaneous instant standing ovation.
It’s a towering five star.

OVERALL

***** (plus)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

You can’t get a better review than this:

Five Star
Domenic Maxwell, Sunday Times *****
Jemma Louise, Reviews Hub *****
Mike Whitton, Stage Talk *****

four star
Arif Akbar, The Guardian ****
Kris Hallett, What’s On Stage ****
James Hatton, Theatre Weekly ****

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

EMMA RICE
Tristan & Yseult, Guildford & tour 2026
North by Northwest Bath 2025
The Buddah of Suburbia, RSC 2024
Blue Beard, by Emma Rice, Bath 2024
Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, Salisbury 2023
Malory Towers, on tour, Exeter 2019
Romantics Anonymous, Wanamaker Playhouse 2017
Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, Globe 2017
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic

JOHN LEADER
The BFG, RSC and Chichester 2026 (The BFG)
The School for Scandal, RSC 2024
The Four Seasons: A Reimagining, Wanamaker Playhouse 2018

NANDI BHEBE
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017

STU BARKER
Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, Globe 2017
Blue Beard, by Emma Rice, Bath 2024