Jazzed Shakespeare… Hamlet: Rotten States, Hope Theatre, 6FootStories

The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

The 6FootStories company have a mission statement “to create bold, exciting pieces of theatre that bend the rules of reality. We like to throw ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances, and explore the big ideas along the way, like LIFE and DEATH and FAITH.” Well, we got all of that in the most unpredictable of evenings in N5 during which Brian Blessed – although he was never present – was revealed to be Hamlet’s father!

The trick with deconstructing and then exploding Shakespeare is that you need to be able to perform it too and this the magnificent trio of Amy Fleming, Will Bridges and Jake Hassam do with aplomb, grounding this runaway reality in the lines of the play. They can improvise around the words as easily as Charlie Parker or Kamasi Washington can take flight with a tune but as with the jazzmen they know the formalities perfectly well.

At one point, Jake Hassam (who along with fellow performer-writer Nigel Munson, set up the company) coaches Amy Fleming’s character in the performance of one famous soliloquy; she goes loud, she goes soft until she get’s it reasonably right. The trio are playing gypsies who have been given instructions by Prince Hamlet to perform a play that, by telling how Hamlet’s father was killed, will reveal the true killer, the King’s brother, by his reaction and possibly that of his wife, Hamlet’s mother and the dead King’s Queen. So far so Shakespeare but the 6Footers take this all in their stride and weave a completely new narrative between their entry and exit in the original play.

Jake Hassam, Amy Fleming and Will Bridges All photographs by Matthew Koltenborn

Whereas Tom Stoppard took minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and explained their battle against fate, here the players are allowed to offer a meditation on the nature of the play highlighting some of what A-level scholars have long termed the awkward bits; Ophelia’s drowning/suicide, Laertes gullibility and the earnest Prince’s inability to kill in cold blood.

All of this is achieved through a mixing desk controlling a glitched, electronic score and also containing a variety of props; Gertrude is played by a polystyrene bust and she wears it well. It’s all so well pitched and perfectly timed – wasn’t it The Bard himself who said that was the essence of all good humour? Or maybe it was Michael McIntyre or someone funny at any rate.

The end result has the audience laughing in between giving thought to what some of the arcane original text actually means which is the greatest tribute. This company have made Shakespeare accessible without lampooning him just “remixing” him.

IThankYou Theatre Rating: **** The fastest Hamlet you’ll see, fast enough to be in the West End, with perfectly controlled sprints from each performer in and around the original text. Quite extraordinary and very funny! I mean, the state of Denmark!

Hamlet: Rotten States plays at the Hope until 1^st February – full details on their website.

All killer, no filler... Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story, Hope Theatre

The upstairs room of The Hope and Anchor is always the extra character in every play I’ve seen, it’s like a sentient being in an Alan Moore fantasy, one that is haunted by the intentions of stage and lightning designers and the stories they tell. Tonight, the room was working overtime as artistic director Matthew Parker’s flair for movement and space brought out new and genuinely shocking dimensions as it always does.

Leopold and Loeb, the two “thrill-killers” suddenly feel the Police closing in and the nervy Leopold swings a torch around revealing a wall plastered with photographs and cuttings from the original murder in 1924. These are all linked together by red cord which criss-crosses the walls and the space above our heads; we’re in an incident room and a young boy has just been horribly murdered by two hyper-intelligent sociopaths.

The two men were saw themselves as Nietzschean supermen, whose superior intellects should allow them to rise above the laws of common men, they began to indulge in criminal exercises just for the hell of it and again, there’s a particularly visceral sequence in which they torch a warehouse and Loeb’s face is lit bright red as he revels in the transgressive destruction and sings, Nothing Like a Fire. There is also a powerful sexual connection between the men and their deeds with Loeb, always the master, making sex conditional on their escapades and passions run alarmingly high after each crime.

Jack Reitman. All photos credit lhphotoshots

Parker doesn’t hold back and before you know it the audience is complicit in the relationship and the tragic attractions of this deadly pursuit, I’ve seen a lot of excellent shows at this venue and Thrill Me is surely one of the most intimately engaging: we’re dared to look into the hearts of men who committed the most appalling of acts, killers who Leopold later said were only human. This is a musical but of the most challenging and ultimately rewarding kind.

For all this to work, you need exceptional leading men and in Bart Lambert and Jack Reitman, Parker has found actors who not only look the part but have West-End power to their vocals as well as nuanced emotional control. As the dominant Richard Loeb, Reitman’s film-star looks are backed up by subtle reading of his character; yes, Loeb is the most overtly sociopathic and daring of the couple but he is also allowed chinks of vulnerability that show he needs his lover as much, perhaps, as he is needed.

Bart Lambert imbues Nathan Leopold with a febrile uncertainty, driven by an obsessive love for Richard and the constant cruelty pushed his way – Loeb calls him “Babe” but only sparingly as he knows he likes it… he undermines at every turn but perhaps he needs the lift?

Bart Lambert. Photo lhphotoshots

Together they drive each other on as the two law students think of ever more thrilling ways to break the rules they have studied - both still aspiring to be lawyers "after".

Stephen Dolginoff’s musical was originally staged in 2003 and tells the story in flashback from Leopold’s parole hearing in 1958 with the narrative switching back and forth to key moments in the men’s relationship. The songs are strong and allow both voices to shine as they sing about subjects that by all rights should be too complex, Richard’s singing about luring their murder victim to his car in Roadster is quite the most disturbing song I’ve heard all year and yet it’s pitched just right; you feel terrible and yet there’s a glimpse of the motivation behind this horrific act.

Tim Shaw sits behind the keyboards, accompanying in fine style, at first noticeable and then fading into the background - in the best possible way - as the story takes hold.

Chris McDonnell lighting design is exceptional as is Rachel Ryan's design and you get a sense of the team ethic of Mr Parker’s Hope which drives the theatre onwards with every new show. Thrill Me is a remarkable show and I if you’re looking for an adventure into the genuinely unexpected, take a walk on the wild side and book with confidence… you’ll still be feeling the show in the days that follow.

IthankyouTheatre rating: ***** For those who don’t believe that musical theatre can tackle complicated real-life stories this is unmissable; it’s an adventure into the lives and love of two killers that fearlessly asks “why?”

Thrill Me, plays at the Hope Theatre until 20th April, full details on the website.  

It's Chrismas!!! Head-Rot Holiday, Hope Theatre

“Christmas is a right frightening bastard. If you can survive it in here then there’s hope.”

I grew up in north Merseyside where one of the biggest local employers was Park Lane, later Ashworth, secure mental hospital. I knew a lot of people whose parents worked there and we were constantly reminded of the place by the sound of the Monday morning alarm test, such a haunting sound which always sounded alien and unsettling.

Ashworth became notorious after it emerged that an atmosphere of sexualised bullying and intimidation was rife and it was one of the institutions that inspired Pru Stevenson to co-found WISH, a voice for women’s mental health in the criminal justice system. Pru worked at HMP Holloway when she became aware of the high numbers of women nearing the end of their prison sentence who were referred to special hospitals like Ashworth. Women were transferred for a variety of reasons and they endured years of additional incarceration beyond their original sentence… once you were in the system it was very difficult to get released.

Treated more harshly than the men, highly medicalised and brutalised, these women were victims of scarcely acknowledged injustice. Sarah Daniels contacted WISH when she was writing this play in 1992 and worked with Pru to create this uncompromising and deeply affecting work.

Emily Tucker, Amy McAllister and Evlyne Oyedokun

This production, directed so ably by Will Maynard, gives us nine characters played by three outstanding actresses, who show how malleable the fourth wall can be when, completely in character they move around the fullness of the Hope’s performance area playing straight to the audience and interacting – always a danger – with the audience. I had a brief conversation with Dee (Amy McAllister) about Dublin as she sat on the side-lines of the hospital’s Christmas disco, out of her depth and genuinely frightened by the evening ahead.

This is what I love about the Hope, you’re really involved in the play and you can see the performance in the visceral and – yes – immersive way. Human instinct over-rides imagination and, like me, you react to Dee and not Amy which says so much about the actor’s skill and commitment in this enthralling, beautiful and brutal play.

Beauty might be an odd word to associate with a play about social injustice, chemical as well as physical imprisonment and physical abuse but there’s dark humour and much satisfaction to be had in the genuine connection with a message communicated with such sincerity.

The daily grind in Penwell: teddy bears, no picnic...

Dee is one of three women in Penwell Special Hospital, a secure mental institution who have previously been transferred from prison for various offenses. She’s not neuro or socially typical and has paid the price for being poor, abused and disadvantaged. She has hopes for parole but can she hold it together in an environment almost designed to undermine mind and body.

Fellow long-termer, Claudia (Evlyne Oyedokun) has spent seven years inside based purely on her inability to surrender after being originally incarcerated for a relatively minor offence and then sectioned for attacking the social worker who had come to tell her that her children would have to remain in care a while longer. Now she has had to give them up for adoption as she lives on alone.

The there is Ruth (Emily Tucker) the most disturbed of the three and the one with the fullest backstory; a victim of horrendous abuse who was jailed for attacking her step-mother. She is constantly at the mercy of her medication and is clearly in intelligent as well as highly-damaged individual in need of some real treatment…

Emily Tucker,

Keeping order are Nurse Jackie (Amy too), a well-meaning northern lass who has yet to be fully corrupted by the system and Sister Barbara (Emily), highly competent and in control yet also the victim of her husband’s physical anger: does abuse cause the conditions and inform the nature of its containment? There’s also a new nurse, Sharon (Evlyne) who is learning the ropes and gives the audience someone to identify with as we’re as horrified as she is with each new discovery.

Things unravel around the hospital’s Christmas disco as Dee – aiming for parole - attempts to “prove” her hetero-normative “sanity” by dressing up and chatting to the male patients and having to listen to a man relishing his talks of rape. Dee also talks to her guardian angel (Evlyne) as she is punished with an increase in medication and it is genuinely distressing to see her character literally unable to think straight, lolled in a wheel chair, all vitality knocked out of her by the bluntest of chemical coshes.

Evlyne Oyedokun

Claudia, as is the norm, is wrongfully sent to solitary and later discovers her case notes; a series of exaggerated reports, motivated by her race more than mental health, that show Sharon for the compromised character she is. Then Ruth also receives a shocking visit from her mother-in-law Helen (Emily) as her truth and potential salvation or doom is gradually revealed.

By the end you’re rooting for all the characters and even the staff who are almost as much the victims. It’s a stunning play with so much intelligent writing all brought to life by these 3x3 performances.

A tip of the hat to Keri Chaser whose sound design set the tone and sucker punched me with judicious use of Kate Bush… there may have been something in my eye.

There are no longer women at Ashworth or Broadmoor… and one hopes that things have improved elsewhere but, somehow, I doubt it.

Further details of WISH as well as the charity, Women in Prison, which provides support for women affected by the justice system can be found on their websites. To, broadly paraphrase Foucault, we get the prisons we deserve as a society but not the prisons we need as individuals… maybe one day a change will come.

Until that time, plays like this are so vital for telling those on the outside what “life” can really mean…

Head-Rot Holiday plays at the Hope until 22^nd December so get your act together and book tickets now from the website or thevenue.

IthankyouTheatre rating: ***** Mesmerising and deeply affecting.

Bad education… The Lesson, The Hope Theatre

Every language is facts, it's only a matter of speaking it…

I prepared for The Lesson by learning nothing about Eugene Ionesco, I knew this play was going to be different and how important it is to the Hope’s Artistic Director Matthew Parker, but I didn’t want to cheat, I wanted to experience it all freshly cut. I wasn’t disappointed – even in my ignorance, my preconception was that this would be another piece of dynamic, jarring, theatre – and it surpassed my lazy assumptions by slicing through the fourth wall and imbedding itself in my mind even after a long working afternoon spent discussing data…

The play’s classroom turns out to be more like a torture chamber than anything else and it wrongfooted the audience who didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp; the main thing they had in common was an open mouth. Some were obviously familiar with the play and the style, but others were reacting with fresh-faced glee and/or horror.

I’ve never seen a funnier play about indoctrination, miss-communication and fascism but that’s damning The Lesson with faint praise. It’s a furiously-complex piece that operates on many levels all at the same time - all of them in your face.

Now I’ve read up on Ionesco and I understand that he wrote this in Post-War France for a first production 1951 and it has been in continuous performance ever since… it really is a play for today that shows just how quickly discourse turns sour and fatal decisions made based on ideas that suit rather than anything else.

Sheetal Kapoor

It begins with a Maid (Joan Potter) cleaning up the classroom of a Professor (Roger Alborough). The doorbell rings and a new Pupil arrives for her lesson (Sheetal Kapoor) with the Professor. The atmosphere is strange and yet here we have a perfectly ordinary scenario; a classroom, an exchange of knowledge what could be safer? What could be more normal?

In this World mademoiselle, one can never be sure of anything…

The Professor comes into the room and starts to assess his eager new pupil who seems as bright as a button! It’s absurdist with her answers to simple questions pleasing him no end as we sit thinking of course 1 + 1 equals 2… but we’re being set up and so skilfully as well. What we think we see is only a pretext for a deeper discourse on the nature of mutual understanding.

So, when the Pupil suddenly wrong-foots expectations by not being able to subtract 3 from 4 we have to readjust expectations and try to work out new rules for this game.

We struggle to see the logic – how can she not subtract? The Pupil seems only capable of learning through wrote; she has memorised the answers to billions of calculations without being able to work them out for herself… that’s brilliant but it’s also disturbing: what kind of society doesn’t allow for the imagination to deviate through creative processing?

The Pupil starts to get tooth ache – a manifestation of the shadow discourse twisting violently in the room. The Maid returns warning the Professor to avoid other subjects, appalled when he suggests philology: “the worst of all!”.

Toothache no barrier to learning...

Knowledge is a danger in itself but it’s the spaces between understanding that is most dangerous of all and the secret meanings you can only second guess unless you “fit”.

Pronunciation is itself, worth an entire dialect!

The tension between Pupil and Professor mounts along with the violence of his language and we look on in dread – what started off as highly formalised politeness has descended into something far more serious and theatrically wonderful!

This is another stunner from The Hope and I swear its playroom morphs like a Tardis in certain productions: I always remember the space differently based on the play. That’s down to ace direction from Artistic Director Matthew Parker along with sound design, lighting and set layout – take a bow Simon Arrowsmith, Chris McDonnell and Rachael Ryan who has the walls covered in chalked calculations; as if we’re the blackboard!

The performers grew larger than life in front of us as audience reality was distorted by the sheer intensity of Roger Alborough’s Professor as his madness proved malleable and self-normalising: we’ve seen so much of that recently haven’t we?

Sheetal Kapoor was the perfect pupil, polite and vulnerable in her conviction that learning would be the all she needed to do. Joan Potter’s cleaner was also relatable as she enabled, acquiesced and kept calm and carried on…

Joan Potter

IThankYou Rating: ***** 2+3 equals 5 as does 7-2 and 19+33. This small space above busy Highbury is transformed into a darkly magically-real else-world… The Man in the Upper Street Hope and Anchor.

The Lesson plays until 13^th October and tickets can be obtained from the Hope Box Office on and online.

You’ve got to be in it to win it… Worth a Flutter, Hope Theatre

OK... Lucy Pinder bursts into the room wearing a kilt and playing the lead character’s very Scottish manhood… it has to be said, you don’t get moments like this very often in the theatre!

Michael Head’s play is crafted from his own experience – maybe not all of it, maybe even not “Hamish” – but it rings so true we were laughing as much with recognition as anything else. It’s a very honest play and told straight to audience and in the Hope’s intimate playing space, you have to really mean it to carry it through.

Michael plays Matt, a semi-professional gambler who’s engaged to the glamorous Paige (Lucy Pinder who has the most a-mazing hair!) mostly because Beyoncé encouraged her to hold up her hand and waggle her ring finger. He met Paige just as she vomited on his £100 shoes and ended up rescuing her from over-indulgence all the way to breakfast.

His best mate Paul (played by the irrepressible Paul Danan) seems to be spending a lot of time with Paige. He’s one of those blokes we all know; every class has one and “every convertible with the top down playing “urban” music, in February…” has one too. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t have to try to enjoy shallow relationships with girls although he did once have a Black Monday in the 90s when he didn’t even get a kiss.

Paul Danan, Michael Head, Clare McNamara and Lucy Pinder

Head’s writing is full of joyous lines that are a gift for this cast and they come thick and fast along with inventions such as Matt’s Caledonian c*ck and a horse race between the worst things to say on a first date including: “do you think I’m fat?”, “I love you” and “you’d make a lovely father”. The cast instantly switch roles for these set pieces and it works because we’ve all said such things even if the country of origin for our privates may vary.

Matt convenes at a café in Bermondsey with Paul and Paige and he’s clearly looking for a way out for, despite her glamour, Paige is not what you’d call a thinker – “like Dumb forgot to brief Stupid” but, as he tells Paul, “you don’t sell your motor if you ain’t got a bike.”

The waitress, Helen (Clare McNamara) is instantly at odds with Paul’s arrogance and Paige’s alpha posturing but takes more care over Matt… there’s something there. One thing leads to another and he has a coffee, the others leave, and he arranges to see her for a drink. Promising you think, and indeed, despite of the interruptions of her elderly neighbour (Mr Danan with a walking stick) the two spend the night together.

The next day Matt’s all aglow and has perhaps said something he shouldn’t in his enthusiasm… Helen is reticent and, this schoolboy error aside, we don’t know why. But then the play wrong foots us as another man enters the café called Sam (Jack Harding who I’d last seen in the excellent Foul Pages). There’s two sides to every story says Matt and we’re about to hear the other one. It won’t turn out well for everybody.

Paul Danan and Michael Head

Sam starts the second act blinking into the lights, he’s not as funny as Matt but his awkwardness soon reveals his backstory and his relationship to Helen.

He’s married and struggling to connect with his beautiful but distracted wife Emma (Ms Pindar again) the two barely listening to the other, something driving them further and further apart.

He’s come to Helen’s café to take counsel from the only person he can think of, office Brent, Martin, a salesman with “the moral compass of a stag do in Ibiza” who’s only advice is bad advice and entirely based on his own experience. He recommends a one-night stand to Sam and, inspired, suggests that Helen would be ideal for various non-flattering reasons.

Sam’s unsure, he’s always unsure, reaching out to find himself after years of compromise – but then both men are. Helen’s response is going to be slightly different to her experience with Matt and the play is very nuanced in this respect… it will all come down to a metaphorical boxing match between the two which is as funny and well-wrought as the horse racing.

At one point Matt wonders if there are any heroes in the play, they’re only ordinary men after all… but if anyone is it’s probably Helen as we learn more about the reasons for her sharp tongue – she is absolutely brutal with Martin’s old sauce and gives better than she gets from Paul’s posing. I’ll have a coffee and bacon roll in any café she’s working!

The Big Match: Jack Harding, Clare McNamara and Michael Head

Jonathon Carr directs smoothly and uses every inch of the Hope as the characters wheel around on horseback, in boxing shorts… in kilts! There’s a great spirit amongst the cast and crew – the Hope positively thrives on hard work and team-play!

The cast are clearly enjoying themselves and Clare McNamara is a superb slow-burner as Helen and her gentle expression is compelling and touching; real tears well up in eyes that light up with a smile. Not everyone can do this and she’s spectacular.

She’s not alone with Michael Head narrating his own words emphatically – likeable and real – whilst Jack Harding wins you over even as you’ve just been rooting his character’s rival. Paul Danan – damn him – is obviously likeable even as a rogue whilst I must commend Lucy Pinter on her debut stage performance; she’s very funny as well as convincing as the flouncy Paige, the bookish Emma and as Matt’s Scottish friend…

Tip of the hat also to Lauren Flynn on lights and sound who smashed it helping us to really believe in the Bermondsey!

Worth a Flutter runs at The Hope Theatre from 1st May to 19th May and tickets are available from the Box Office and online too: it’s another hit for The Hope and a big hearted, generous, spirited play.

IThankYou Rating: **** Rings so many bells it could be Christmas; see it for some great wordplay and committed performers. And, believe me when I say that “The Scottish Play” will never be the same again…

Cream Punk… Cream Tea and Incest, Hope Theatre

“Remember what it says in the bible: aim for the stomach and he’ll bleed heavily but won’t die straight away.”

That time when someone slipped PG Wodehouse a little something in his tea.

A battle for the nation’s very soul between Lord Lord Wiggins and his, marginally, more-evil brother Lord Biggins Wiggins against that dynamic duo Eddie “The Mangler” Spangler and his loyal butler Jeffrey. It’s a fight involving Keynesian multipliers, the full Marx, free-market opium production and being beastly with the best intentions as well as the best Edwardian inventions. But most of all… incest and tea with cream: you just cannot say fairer than that. It’s national. Also, WAR!

Setting his arms against a mill of troubles is Benjamin Alborough who this play did both write and perform despite no doubt gracious advice from the kind of people who wouldn’t do this sort of thing. They were all wrong and he was all right on the knight.

I can’t keep this up, but this play leaves you giddy, all shook up from close-proximity silly and the ever-present danger of song, direct eye and even actual contact; in a play in which death by cuddling is all too frequent, being in the front row takes its toll. There’s also magnificent double, triple, quadruple, round-the-back and forth again, word play in which the simplest phrase can mean some-think else: imagine Lee Mack had he gone to Christ Church or Balliol. Relentless. Funny. Charming.

And what’s more; it’s all done with cardboard. Yes, beware even your Amazon packaging for cardboard is flexible and believable… cardboard can kill, especially in the careless hands of Spangler. The backdrop is cardboard, his waistcoat is cardboard, breakfast, knickers and a fully functioning gun are all cardboard. Quite rightly they say, this is the World’s first 2.5-dimensional show.

But the characters leap out from the beige, Lord Lord Wiggins (Aidan Cheng) dressed in a splendid silken suit – all the rage for tailored-trousered philanthropists – has an accent so far beyond plummy that you’d have to call it jam. It’s a wonderful turn from Cheng, certainly one of the four hardest working men in showbiz (on Upper Street at the very least).

Spangker has a plan!

Wiggins has inherited his father’s wealth and is looking to marry Rhodesia itself in the form of Emily Rhodes. But he is having a crisis of capitalism and isn’t sure whether to seek trickle-down solace in a free market or to appropriate the means of production and, damn it all, he isn’t sure Emily is the one, yes, he’s not convinced that Rhodes-is-her.

Important government types send the indefatigable Eddie and his valiant valet (excellent Eoin McAndrew) to the rescue. All they have to do is ensure that Wiggins doesn’t falter – the fate of Empire rests on it and much more besides as Spangler’s opium production will be compromised by any Rhodes-exit and subsequent tariff impositions. AND, War!!

But it’s not that simple, how could it be… Enter a hail of rhetorical ferocity in the form of unlucky Wiggins sibling, Lord Biggins (a spectacular Edward Spence), who wants nothing less than the restitution of his rightful inheritance after Dad favoured his more gentile brother. He means murder and we quite believe it.

Now the card really hits the board as all these unstoppable objects meet in an irresistibly hilarious conflagration.

Benjamin Philipp directs his fantastic four exceptionally with a script packed full of enough words for a play twice as long. The actors’ verbal dexterity is matched by their ability to dance and, yes, sing, in the Hope’s intimate space. What I love about this place is the closeness between audience and performers, there’s nothing for it but engagement and whilst others talk of “immersive” the Hope has always been involving from the very first power chords in its basement to the latest excuse me in eth queue for the loo. A great pub and an exceptional theatrical venue.

 Eoin McAndrew, , Edward Spence, Aidan Cheng and Benjamin Alborough

By the end we were all singing along to the play’s theme tune, clicking our fingers in time as the players summed up – I even had a go at matching Eoin McAndrew’s higher register but he knows what he’s doing!

Cream Tea and Incest plays until 28^th April and tickets are available from the box office… then it returns at the Edinburgh Festival, follow the play on Facebook and Twitter for more details.

Ithankyou Theatre verdict: **** Call me a cardboard lover!*

All Production photography by Olivia Rose Deane.

*Things are – possibly – taken a step further in The Cardboard Lover, a 1928 silent film featuring the brilliant comedienne Marion Davies and scandi-smoulderer Nils Asner.

Further watching for those who the board of card do love...

Best laid plans… I Know You of Old, Golem Theatre company, Hope Theatre

What is so striking about David Fair’s clever recasting of Much Ado… is that it’s more of a re-mix than an extrapolation along the lines of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Whilst those two characters had endless new words to say, Fairs has used only cuts from Shakespeare’s own text which, having not been aware before the production, is quite a feat.

Also, whilst Hamlet’s college buddies had no way of escaping their fate – the clue being in the title… the characters here are not guaranteed anything: a broader existential crisis than the doomed Danes faced. I Know You of Old is therefore, Much Ado About Something with hints of themes from other plays including King Lear… “thou, nature, are my goddess” but that could be just Bill?

Conor O'Kane

Fair’s idea follows the main line of the original play but there’s a twist that I can’t really reveal… The story starts after Hero has died and is lying in a coffin in the chapel and, not that far from the audience. The fact that Benedick and Beatrice’s verbal battles take place over Hero’s coffin immediately adds a new context especially as Claudio is, naturally, broken hearted and subsumed in the depths of his guilt.

Cleverly we have a flashback to the moment when Claudio denounces Hero at their wedding via Benedick’s iPhone which plays back the moments right up to her death but even if you haven’t seen the source play, the performances convey the meaning which again is to be praised, not just the acting but also Fair’s editing.

David Fairs

Fair plays the determined batchelor Benedick as a man with a high opinion of his own wit who has the words to back his confidence up. He’s cool in a leather jacket and shades although his taste in music leaves a lot to be desired. Against him is the ferocious Beatrice played by Sarah Lambie with an elegance that belies the potency of her temper and the ability to convey so much bile with so few words.

Almost cowering between these two is Claudio as played by Conor O'Kane who is never entirely distracted from his grief by the pull of his friends’ personalities and, in an effort to derive something positive from the tragedy, attempts to trick the two to fall in love…

Ah, we know where this is going… or do we?

Sarah Lambie

It’s a very smart script and the three performers are all outstanding: O’Kane as the broken man desperate to atone for the fatal error of his pride covers the emotional ground with exhausted ease while Fairs takes Benedick’s arrogance into tragic new directions, his confidence disolving before our eyes. Sarah Lambie is a class act who covers the comedy as convincingly as the drama and I’m still smiling at the kittenish drop of Beatrice’s hair as she starts the uncomfortable process of flirting with the man she loved to hate! 

Director Anna Marsland desrves high praise for pacing the narrative with such finesse - she uses the space and the players so well, there's a constant flow of motion and emotion leaving the watching audience immersed in the passion play. Guys, you could easily have taken a second bow!

One’s to watch and another superb production at this pearl of a venue!

I Know You of Old runs until the 1^st of July and it’s definitely one to catch because nothing can be taken for granted in matters of love, war and text in spite of the adage… Tickets are available from the Hope Theatre box office and online, I'd urge you to book now to avoid disappointment!

There's also a facinating interview with David and Anna in which they discuss the play and Golem Theatre company's aims at Culture by Night.

Ithankyou rating: ****

David Fairs and Sarah Lambie on location promotion