Arts
That's entertainment
Giles Gordon
The Merry Wives of Windsor (Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park) The Clandestine Marriage (Albery)
If you've an eye for anagrams, you'll notice in the programme for Epicoene that the eponymous heroine is played by Katy Rigley, whose biographical details are scanty. On the other hand, Gary Kielty (An Imposter) has quite a few credits. The hero of this rare Ben Jonson (1609; three years after Volpone, a year before The Alchemist) is Morose, and Frank Barrie offers an eloquent, rich and, given our dangerously clever and splenetic play- wright, sympathetic portrayal of a wealthy man with a phobia about noise who, to disinherit his nephew, desires to marry a silent woman. The young relative, Truewit (Douglas Hodge, who for verve, style and dexterity with the barbed language should instantly be head-hunted by the RSC), persuades him to marry Epicoene, who turns out to be a great prattler and, well, a boy. This latter fact is revealed only after Morose declares himself impotent, which he isn't. All this, and much more, so that the naughty nephew may inherit. Michael Winter's confident production, designed by Hugh Durrant — the set is Jacobean, all doors and windows posing as panels; the costumes fashionable punk, luminous and nihilistic — begins at a terrific pace and, if nothing else, convinces that either of the national companies should, at least once in their histories, have revived the play. There's a large cast of characters, deliciously named, many from the human zoo or aviary: Sir Jack Daw (Leon Tanner, his costume housing poems for every occasion, scroll upon scroll), Captain Otter (Richard Mayes) and mem- bers of the College of Women including Madame Centaure and Mistress Doll Mavis: they urge Epicoene to become if not a full at least an honorary member.
This rude, vivacious minor English clas- sic is precisely the sort of fare that should be shown at festivals, and the achievement of Mr Winter and his most competent cast is to present it freshly as a newly mown lawn: the worms wriggle up from the subsoil. Also, I've never seen costumes that straddle almost 400 years and seem appropriate both to the period of the play
I've ordered one for the wife as a Christmas present.'
Spectator 16 June 1984 and the present. And Frank .Barrie announces by his performance that he is ready to command the major classical roles.
As the great painters, sculptors and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages took the Old and New Testaments as their inspiration, so did the authors of the York Cycle of Mystery Plays (their Minster:
inspiration) nspiration) in the 14th century. Toby Robertson in his thrilling, always varied and unexpected, highly theatrical four- hour version of 25-odd of the devotional plays — done on a multi-tiered set (de- signed by Franco Colavecchia) in front of the arched and excitingly lit ruins of St Mary's Abbey — makes only one mistake. Of the Old Testament plays, he presents but the Creation: surely better to have gone straight to the Annunciation (The Spicers' Play, not previously seen since 1560) and ended with The Day of Judg- ment (The Mercers' Play). What astonishes, thrills and compels is the sheer entertainment value of the impish, utterly human but not irreligious evening. There is robust poetry in the vernacular language of the plays, an every- day lyricism: Stan Barstow and Andrew Lloyd Webber would both, I feel, approve of Mr Robertson's Yorkshire pudding. 1'9 slight — quite the opposite --- is intended to Simon Ward's dignified Jesus (a York- shire accent pre-crucifixion, 'standard' En- glish thereafter). He plays the part with great stillness, and only doubting The mases can regret the lack of wounds or gore on Mr Ward's pale body as he hair:, naked but for pyjama bottoms, on "I" tubular steel cross. Yet Mr Robertson prises from his otherwise local, amateur cast, performances which, from Iraq °f I, the principals, are miraculous, Mieue'i-f Whitehead (Mary Magdalene) sings as auditioning for Mr Lloyd Webber (surely she will), Michael Brown's stern, troubled Pilate and the black God of Keith Jeffers°1It (who doubles as Herod, a frantic Wes Indian cricket supporter) stand out. There are images galore: huge crowd scenes, Jesus ascending to heaven; the devil Po, mg a red, smoky hell; the alliterations stare, rhymes of The Lysteres' Play; the firpei. works that accompany the Ascension; n late's Palestine with red banners, green trees, dying blue sky and floodlit stonets Less to enthuse about in London. 0°10. third night, David Conville's straggly duction of The Merry Wives of Win was more pissing pastoral than bourgeje. Windsor, though in addition to the r•ii, gent's Park rain President Reagan
he c copters thrashed about the
Ambassador's residence and the Heathr°;;. flight path seemed diverted to this Ilea! is cal Windsor. Shakespeare in the abut absurd and only for American tourists no Kate O'Mara sparkles as Mistress Ford.a, w nearby Dora Bryan plays Mistress Quickly as if ht the Bard born. Ronald Fraser's fat long is, in every sense, the thinnest I've seen Kinder to say even less about Antbotyr Quayle's Ye Olde Fashioned production I" David Garrick's and George Colman's comedy The Clandestine Marriage (1766). What the RSC and the National have achieved since Mr Quayle ran the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre make it Impossible either to enjoy or take seriously this kind of casual, unfocussed reading of a Pleasant minor classic that needs a strong directorial viewpoint. I longed for it to be taken in hand by Gaskill, Gill or Dexter. Tanya Moiseiwitsch's fuzzy sets sink it, and most of the acting is self-indulgent beyond Words. Every second actor seems to wear funny teeth, too. Roy Kinnear as a mer- chant on the make plays Roy Kinnear. Mr Quayle's Lord Ogleby is, alone among the Cast, not ostentatious enough.
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