1 00:00:03,020 --> 00:00:06,200 Good evening. It's Thursday, the 10th of March 2020. 2 00:00:06,560 --> 00:00:12,560 I'm Ruth Moore, and this is a torch show conversation coming to you from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon. 3 00:00:13,460 --> 00:00:17,780 We're here for tonight's performance of one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Much Ado About Nothing, 4 00:00:19,070 --> 00:00:23,629 directed by Rory Alexander Rise Much Ado Stars A King Henry as Beatrice and 5 00:00:23,630 --> 00:00:28,220 Luke Wilson as Benedick with set design by Jemima Robinson Costume Design by 6 00:00:28,220 --> 00:00:34,220 Melissa Simon Hartman and an original score by Femi Tambo by the programme 7 00:00:34,220 --> 00:00:38,270 promises us a futuristic world where two very different couples fall in love. 8 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:46,130 The who is really pulling the strings with dastardly plots, hilarious slapstick and some of Shakespeare's wittiest dialogue. 9 00:00:46,700 --> 00:00:51,830 This story of matchmaking and manipulation is the perfect way to celebrate the joy of live theatre. 10 00:00:53,480 --> 00:00:57,740 After the show, we'll be joined by Professor Judith Buchanan, master of St Peter's College, 11 00:00:58,010 --> 00:01:01,640 and Professor Emma Smith, professor of Shakespeare Studies Oxford University. 12 00:01:02,330 --> 00:01:07,310 Judith and Emma will be sharing their reflections on the production and on the return of Shakespeare to the esteemed. 13 00:01:11,930 --> 00:01:16,270 So we were at the interval of the RC Much Ado. 14 00:01:16,310 --> 00:01:22,700 And yeah, we've got to the bit where Claudio has just seen the terrible betrayal at the at the window 15 00:01:22,700 --> 00:01:27,410 which we of the balcony which we did actually see although that's not in the in the play. 16 00:01:27,560 --> 00:01:30,710 What do you think, Judith? Well, we saw a little bit of the saucy trick. 17 00:01:30,950 --> 00:01:34,700 We did, didn't we? We did. I am really enjoying it. 18 00:01:35,120 --> 00:01:38,330 I am. The design is extraordinary. 19 00:01:38,570 --> 00:01:46,430 It's a sort of futuristic vision, although it's a slightly sort of nostalgic sense of the future, it seems to me. 20 00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:50,540 And there's a lot of festive bonny energy. 21 00:01:51,020 --> 00:01:54,200 I am guessing a lot of the sense of mirth. 22 00:01:54,620 --> 00:01:56,700 And it's been Almer so far. 23 00:01:56,720 --> 00:02:08,380 So I'm interested to see how they're going to contain that and perhaps be more, hey, non-union, even signs of work at the moment. 24 00:02:08,390 --> 00:02:12,410 So I'm not sure where they're going to take that or how they're going to bring that down. 25 00:02:12,410 --> 00:02:18,230 But there's been a lot of beauty, a lot of gold, a lot of fizz, a lot of energy so far. 26 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:22,480 Have you found it? It's not so interesting hearing you say that. 27 00:02:22,630 --> 00:02:25,959 I'm not enjoying it. And that's quite unlike me. 28 00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:28,900 And some think, why am I not enjoying it? I think the set is in the way. 29 00:02:29,680 --> 00:02:39,400 So I think we've just seen those two amazing comic scenes where first Benedick and then Beatrice are tricked in, 30 00:02:39,550 --> 00:02:44,290 you know, with these kind of hopeless hiding places and that, you know, it's all been put on for their benefit. 31 00:02:44,290 --> 00:02:52,059 And I thought they were both really clumsily blocked, particularly Benedict's actually where the boy who is part of the scene is now. 32 00:02:52,060 --> 00:02:57,480 He's going to go and get a book which was kind of in the way I didn't I couldn't see Benedict's kind of reaction. 33 00:02:57,490 --> 00:03:03,879 I couldn't get the reaction shots. I thought that was an example of the way that the set is a law in itself. 34 00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:05,740 I mean, it's not actually helping. 35 00:03:06,670 --> 00:03:15,040 I felt a bit with that wonderful fountain they brought on was a big piece of kit, very little used for the effort of it. 36 00:03:16,930 --> 00:03:24,220 And it feels to me slow. And it's slow because of course, the music part of this is some set piece dancing. 37 00:03:25,150 --> 00:03:28,959 Yeah. Wes has brought some ice cream. That's fantastic. 38 00:03:28,960 --> 00:03:32,320 Thank you. Everything will be everything will be improved by that. 39 00:03:32,320 --> 00:03:35,139 I think I'm really enjoying the music so that I mean, 40 00:03:35,140 --> 00:03:44,469 I agree I agree with you that some of the blocking does feel a little bit impediment free or that it's sort of impeding a sense of the fluency. 41 00:03:44,470 --> 00:03:48,200 But when the fluency is allowed to happen and the music releases some of that food, 42 00:03:48,330 --> 00:03:53,680 I think I think the cast is much more comfortable in the music, I think actually than actually than in the dialogue maybe. 43 00:03:53,710 --> 00:04:01,630 I agree. And when I first saw the some of the costumes, I did feel that they could be somewhat in the way. 44 00:04:01,630 --> 00:04:05,380 They're very big kind of cartoonish proportions. 45 00:04:05,380 --> 00:04:10,390 Yeah, some of them amazing pictures only. That's weird, kind of weird superheroes. 46 00:04:10,390 --> 00:04:16,810 I mean, it was a superhero entrance, a super superhero entrance for Don Pedro. 47 00:04:17,230 --> 00:04:18,910 And she is in this production. 48 00:04:19,360 --> 00:04:28,440 And Claudio and Benedict, they were given a glorious entrance as they descended at speed from the gods, kind of waving their superhero capes. 49 00:04:28,470 --> 00:04:35,560 Yeah, absolutely. And there was a kind of sense of we're back, we've been at war and now let the loving became. 50 00:04:35,560 --> 00:04:38,860 What's that? Was this? That's right. What do you think about having done, Pedro? 51 00:04:39,340 --> 00:04:40,540 Because one of the things. 52 00:04:43,240 --> 00:04:50,170 I mean, one kind of really obvious thing to say about the play and the whole reason attempts to say it is to not say obvious things about the play. 53 00:04:50,170 --> 00:04:55,180 But one obvious thing about the plays is a kind of gender war, isn't it? 54 00:04:55,190 --> 00:05:00,760 The women's world in the men's world is actually quite different and there is a toxic component to that. 55 00:05:01,420 --> 00:05:05,320 Having one thing about having Don Pedro as this prominent sort of go between. 56 00:05:06,010 --> 00:05:19,510 Yes. I mean, they they played that quite nicely at the moment, at which Don Pedro but now Don Pedro offers him slash herself in jest, in seriousness. 57 00:05:19,510 --> 00:05:30,579 We don't know to Beatrice and but but because it was now a woman offering herself to a woman, that was a real delicacy, 58 00:05:30,580 --> 00:05:39,639 I thought, in how Beatrice responded to that, which was I respect the offer and I respect the possibility of that. 59 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:44,620 But that's not my thing. I think that's I do not that's not my direction. 60 00:05:44,950 --> 00:05:49,570 Yeah, that's interesting. And it gave quite an interesting spin, didn't it, to them saying. 61 00:05:52,700 --> 00:05:57,830 I mean, in the 21st century, a woman. This is a kind of Sondheim on a story, in a way. 62 00:05:58,010 --> 00:06:01,310 You know, the woman who says, I just don't want to be married. I just don't want to be married. 63 00:06:01,490 --> 00:06:05,330 I mean, there in Shakespeare, there is only. Well, you will be married, sweetheart. 64 00:06:05,630 --> 00:06:06,650 You just have met the right man. 65 00:06:07,250 --> 00:06:13,760 There are other narratives that that are available to us and that were sort of available to the production for a moment, which which I thought was. 66 00:06:13,760 --> 00:06:15,320 Well, yeah, it was well done. 67 00:06:15,920 --> 00:06:24,230 But I agree with you about we really need to feel that that kind of collective male energy is nervous of the female world. 68 00:06:24,530 --> 00:06:31,030 And the collective male energy has been compromised in this production by having a woman at the centre of it. 69 00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:39,140 So when, when Benedick is is saying, I guess I respect women, you know, one gave birth to me, etc., etc., but I will never trust a woman. 70 00:06:39,220 --> 00:06:45,590 Yes, it is a slightly odd audience for that because he's saying that to a woman in this production, 71 00:06:45,950 --> 00:06:53,089 but that that sense of kind of collective anxiety about what it might do to them individually and what it might do to them 72 00:06:53,090 --> 00:06:59,180 collectively and their sort of bonds of brotherhood to now have come back from the wars and to be exposed to this world, 73 00:06:59,180 --> 00:07:04,100 which is dominated by clever, fast talking, strong minded women. 74 00:07:05,450 --> 00:07:10,999 I'm still feeling a little bit of that. I like the kind of martial, bellicose energy of the beginning. 75 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:19,370 I felt like that was fun and had a sense of its own sort of impish, self-conscious ness as well. 76 00:07:19,790 --> 00:07:27,160 I am I am anxious about how they are going to tonally change that in the second half. 77 00:07:27,170 --> 00:07:37,010 But I am waiting to be delighted and surprised about how they can find a slightly darker tone about the things that we know are coming. 78 00:07:37,760 --> 00:07:38,570 That's fantastic. 79 00:07:38,580 --> 00:07:45,110 I'm really pleased we actually just talked about it in the interview because I think I will probably enjoy I can see a lot of what you've said. 80 00:07:45,130 --> 00:07:54,970 I actually think I might enjoy it. Having thought about those things, I do think that project of the three gendering characters, 81 00:07:54,970 --> 00:08:03,160 which has a really important political energy about the theatre industry and about the kinds of stories we tell, particularly about classic plays. 82 00:08:03,970 --> 00:08:08,530 I think sometimes it's likely that Shakespeare's own gender politics offer the whole a bit, 83 00:08:08,590 --> 00:08:11,590 and I think that might be happening might be happening here. 84 00:08:12,730 --> 00:08:17,260 And I hear your cautiousness about the sex. So it makes for spectacular photos. 85 00:08:17,310 --> 00:08:22,030 Yeah. Yeah. And it's an awesome experience to be in the presence of it. 86 00:08:22,330 --> 00:08:31,540 But there is a certain amount of stepping around it needed and it doesn't offer that kind of cover spaces and hiding places that this scene demands, 87 00:08:31,540 --> 00:08:35,860 but that that's asking for our collusion. And I'm a theatre audience that is happy to collude. 88 00:08:36,100 --> 00:08:39,100 Yeah. In a completely in a nice of work with a wheelbarrow. 89 00:08:39,470 --> 00:08:43,120 Yeah, yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I'm about to. Okay. 90 00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:48,609 So the second part I think is going to be yeah, I mean that and I'm glad that you sort of set up. 91 00:08:48,610 --> 00:08:52,060 How are they going to turn that? How they're going to turn the temperature? 92 00:08:52,640 --> 00:08:55,720 Yeah, well, let's see. We've been cool back and finish your ice cream, Emma. 93 00:08:59,800 --> 00:09:05,200 So we're back in Oxford. JUDITH It's been a couple of days since we saw Much Ado About Nothing Wolf. 94 00:09:05,320 --> 00:09:09,460 Well, what rests in your mind about it now? What? What do you think when I say that? 95 00:09:10,450 --> 00:09:17,080 I remember design. Yeah. And I remember an atmosphere of some. 96 00:09:17,230 --> 00:09:21,160 Some really stand out performances. I remember. 97 00:09:21,610 --> 00:09:28,479 So we start by talking about design. Yes. It was such a design led production in some ways that it was very ideas heavy in relation to design. 98 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:32,200 And the the impact of design was big. 99 00:09:32,260 --> 00:09:37,140 Hmm. Yeah. And when we, when we were talking about it in Stratford, I was, I mean, 100 00:09:37,570 --> 00:09:46,090 doesn't this these sort of metal shapes that were the kind of classical garden that we tend to see in the overhearing scenes? 101 00:09:46,090 --> 00:09:50,170 We tend to see some topiary, don't we, and some people behind the don't think too much of that. 102 00:09:50,380 --> 00:09:53,410 And I realised, I mean having thought about it, 103 00:09:53,410 --> 00:10:03,270 I thought that was a rather brilliantly striking part realist, part expressionist, kind of a kind of scene. 104 00:10:03,280 --> 00:10:08,530 And, and I think that was probably something about the design more generally that 105 00:10:08,530 --> 00:10:14,670 in some ways it was a very lavish set of stuff in the world of that machina. 106 00:10:15,400 --> 00:10:21,730 But in other ways it was a lot of kind of slightly dream objects planted on the stage. 107 00:10:22,150 --> 00:10:25,240 And I think that was more interesting and smarter than than mine. 108 00:10:25,840 --> 00:10:31,030 It's great to have the chance to rethink, isn't it? I think if we'd done this immediately after the production, which we didn't do, 109 00:10:31,030 --> 00:10:37,060 partly because it went on so long, I would have been and I've had a bit more time to think. 110 00:10:37,290 --> 00:10:38,329 I think I agree with that. 111 00:10:38,330 --> 00:10:48,750 So that the the futuristic vision of the set and design generally also necessarily invited us into a collusive relationship we had. 112 00:10:48,760 --> 00:10:51,129 It was a bit Oberon. I am invisible now. 113 00:10:51,130 --> 00:10:56,410 We needed to, but we needed to collaborate with the onstage actors to believe that they were invisible at those moments, 114 00:10:56,410 --> 00:11:02,440 despite the fact that their efforts to self hide were patently insufficient actually. 115 00:11:02,440 --> 00:11:08,530 To be hidden. So. So that a lot of some of the futuristic things had odd moments so that there 116 00:11:08,530 --> 00:11:13,120 was a I thought the overall design was rather beautiful and rather striking. 117 00:11:13,120 --> 00:11:18,519 And I remember it as a series of quite impressive stills and that that's both about set, 118 00:11:18,520 --> 00:11:30,249 but also about those lavish kind of carnivalesque o-t costumes, which were witty in their extravagance with enormous wigs and enormous headpieces, 119 00:11:30,250 --> 00:11:34,600 and a huge number of costume changes, a lot of gold, a lot of shine, 120 00:11:34,600 --> 00:11:40,840 a lot of sort of almost kind of comic book kitsch in some of the kind of scale of those things. 121 00:11:41,650 --> 00:11:48,250 But there were also odd things which I which clearly had some significant thinking behind them, which I didn't know how to place. 122 00:11:48,670 --> 00:11:57,610 So when the men turn up with their swashbuckling glory coming back from the wars, they unload that treasure. 123 00:11:57,970 --> 00:12:04,480 And that treasure is a chest of glowing orbs, and the glowing orbs then reappear. 124 00:12:04,480 --> 00:12:09,940 It's sort of significant moments as if they've got some sort of ceremonial weight and that I, 125 00:12:10,540 --> 00:12:16,599 I don't know what sort of meaning to invest in those, although clearly they're designed to mean something. 126 00:12:16,600 --> 00:12:23,049 So they appear at the wedding. That isn't the wedding that might have been the wedding that nearly is the wedding that dissolves into violence. 127 00:12:23,050 --> 00:12:28,840 And then they have to retreat quickly because that ceremonial moment has been so dramatically disrupted. 128 00:12:29,110 --> 00:12:35,439 And the other moments when I thought the sort of futuristic vision this is is quite interesting 129 00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:42,190 but and it's quite ideas heavy but some of those ideas are not fully translating I. 130 00:12:43,220 --> 00:12:50,590 Them dog and crew working with that very old fashioned blackboard which has been hung with fairy lights. 131 00:12:51,310 --> 00:12:59,920 I started by thinking, oh my goodness, this is a this is the most compromised futuristic vision you could possibly have working with a blackboard. 132 00:13:00,520 --> 00:13:07,990 And then I thought, actually, technical and technological revolutions quite often do leave people behind, and that, if you will, 133 00:13:08,020 --> 00:13:13,390 feeling left behind and you wanted to use a blackboard, you might turn it with lights in order to make it look a little bit more techno. 134 00:13:14,380 --> 00:13:23,530 But that would have taken more, had the technological pizzazz of the rest of the production around it, had more traction. 135 00:13:23,530 --> 00:13:26,829 So there were little kind of gestures in that direction when, you know, 136 00:13:26,830 --> 00:13:30,940 when the letter arrives at the very beginning, it's on some quite fancy little tablet. 137 00:13:30,940 --> 00:13:38,020 And then in fact, notes are taken on a fancy little shiny tablet in the in the crazy trial scene. 138 00:13:38,290 --> 00:13:43,300 So I the futuristic vision was both kind of beguiling and perplexing. 139 00:13:43,800 --> 00:13:47,740 I completely agree. But I suppose what I think that that has given to the play, 140 00:13:48,160 --> 00:13:53,440 which is often a play we think of as not really needing a kind of interpretive 141 00:13:53,440 --> 00:13:58,540 frame because it is psychologically plausible in ways that we recognise. 142 00:13:58,540 --> 00:14:03,229 So we think. Okay. This is just two people who were obviously made for each other. 143 00:14:03,230 --> 00:14:09,320 But can't you know that to hurt or to, you know, whatever is stopping them getting together and that's sort of all we need. 144 00:14:09,320 --> 00:14:13,940 It doesn't need it's not a not almost as if it's not an ideas play. 145 00:14:13,940 --> 00:14:24,169 It's a it's a human nature play. And so I suppose I think it was a really very stimulating, brave, brave. 146 00:14:24,170 --> 00:14:28,790 Is that what you always say when it didn't work? And I don't quite mean that, but perhaps a little element of that. 147 00:14:29,060 --> 00:14:33,350 But to turn it into an ideas play, which is in a different world from ours, 148 00:14:33,740 --> 00:14:41,570 where there are some points of recognition that sometimes psychological, but there are lots of alienation as well. 149 00:14:41,630 --> 00:14:43,730 And I think that was a good thing to do with Much Ado, 150 00:14:43,730 --> 00:14:51,860 which can seem a bit too easy or a bit too straightforwardly layered onto our and onto our own world. 151 00:14:52,520 --> 00:15:00,860 But it is a very human play, isn't it? I mean that the rhetorical flourishes are always embedded in the sense of the psychology of did you believe it? 152 00:15:00,860 --> 00:15:05,120 Did you believe that the sort of human ness of those couples and. 153 00:15:05,450 --> 00:15:10,939 Well, I suppose if I was going to a production of Much Ado and I didn't yet know what to expect, 154 00:15:10,940 --> 00:15:17,510 one of the things I would be asking myself is how are they going to balance up the mirth and the matter? 155 00:15:17,690 --> 00:15:24,019 How are they going to temper the hanging on in on a with signs of woe? 156 00:15:24,020 --> 00:15:33,349 And the play has some kind of balance between those two things, although it's also generically as a comedy, 157 00:15:33,350 --> 00:15:41,059 it also feels like a sort of rehearsal for something that engages much more with the sons of woe later in late plays. 158 00:15:41,060 --> 00:15:43,910 When we get to Winter's Tale about what it means to be a woman who has been 159 00:15:43,910 --> 00:15:48,950 wrongly accused of chastity and what kind of pain that can unleash in the world. 160 00:15:49,220 --> 00:15:52,400 So it allows for a little bit of a sort of gestural encounter with that pain. 161 00:15:53,450 --> 00:16:00,379 But but it also resolves it almost uncomfortably fast in a way. 162 00:16:00,380 --> 00:16:06,080 That Winter's Tale, of course, allows itself to stay in that place of pain for 16 years. 163 00:16:06,770 --> 00:16:15,890 And so I but I do I do think that there was a sort of phase and a buzz and a crackle of of human engagement. 164 00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:24,080 And I particularly, I have to say in Beatrice, in a kid, Henry's Beatrice was this dynamo of sassiness, 165 00:16:24,080 --> 00:16:30,320 of feisty sexiness and of winning in all of those rhetorical tussles and fun. 166 00:16:30,350 --> 00:16:37,549 There was a lot of fun, I think I said at the interval that I was interested to see how they were going to still act, 167 00:16:37,550 --> 00:16:45,350 how they were going to bring that into some kind of darker tonality which is waiting in the second half. 168 00:16:45,350 --> 00:16:52,820 I don't know. What did you feel about the the tone or the measure or the pain of the second half? 169 00:16:55,770 --> 00:16:59,250 I. Yeah. 170 00:17:00,100 --> 00:17:08,060 I mean, I do think that the Beatrice Benedick relationship, which is born out of in a bond in that moment of pain, isn't it? 171 00:17:08,070 --> 00:17:19,270 I mean, they're completely inextricable. I did think that. Beatrice kill Claudia was a kind of wonderful, wonderful moment, was perfectly timed. 172 00:17:19,270 --> 00:17:22,900 It's very quick. It was it was very vehement. 173 00:17:24,100 --> 00:17:30,160 It was very okay. You know, we can't we can't go down this romantic line. 174 00:17:30,610 --> 00:17:33,130 She's not you know, she's not having that. She hasn't changed completely. 175 00:17:34,330 --> 00:17:40,840 I didn't want her to change, but one of the things the whole play made me realise was how violent the, 176 00:17:41,340 --> 00:17:48,490 uh, the violence to Beatrice in the overhearing seen the violence done to her. 177 00:17:48,850 --> 00:17:57,270 Her sense of herself that she hears from the others is, you know, foretells or foreshadows what's going to be done to hero and complicates a bit. 178 00:17:57,280 --> 00:18:01,810 That's the sense that I suppose I've always returned to, which is that this is a play about. 179 00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:05,980 This is a sort of battle, a battle of the sexes kind of play. 180 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:09,570 If it's heading towards Winter's Tale, it's building off Taming of the Shrew. 181 00:18:11,430 --> 00:18:17,230 But actually, the women are horrible to Beatrice, aren't they? And I was worried when she comes in, doesn't she? 182 00:18:17,260 --> 00:18:25,579 And she's got a cold, or has she got the Benedict or whatever? She's a little bit she was a little bit wounded there. 183 00:18:25,580 --> 00:18:31,740 It's a bit bruised was it. Wasn't she. And I realised I don't want Beatrice to be to stop being. 184 00:18:32,340 --> 00:18:38,550 None of us do. We don't want her to stop being difficult and mouthy and witty. 185 00:18:40,770 --> 00:18:51,659 And I think she managed. What I liked about the performance was I think we we managed to keep that even even in the that the relationship killed 186 00:18:51,660 --> 00:18:56,489 Claudia a moment was played in a very different way from the from the way I think I've ever seen it played before. 187 00:18:56,490 --> 00:19:00,069 It got a significant laugh. Yeah. And as you say, it, 188 00:19:00,070 --> 00:19:09,479 it bit back very fast so that we're at the been the sort of foothills of the revelation of the of the of the extremity of their love for each other. 189 00:19:09,480 --> 00:19:16,770 And it is. And he says, How can I prove my love for you? And she she fights back with kill Claudia with such speed that it looks like everything 190 00:19:16,770 --> 00:19:20,999 before that point has been strategic in order to be able to manoeuvre him into that place. 191 00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:23,850 And the audience laughed quite significantly at that point. 192 00:19:24,330 --> 00:19:29,910 And that I think, I, I think I have only ever seen it before as a moment of deadly stillness, 193 00:19:30,360 --> 00:19:34,410 where she then instructs him to do the thing that must be done, 194 00:19:34,890 --> 00:19:41,549 knowing that it is a a an extraordinary burden to place upon him since his brother in arms 195 00:19:41,550 --> 00:19:47,100 and his friend is the man who he's now being instructed to kill on the question of honour, 196 00:19:48,060 --> 00:19:51,629 but to play it for laughs. I thought that was brave. 197 00:19:51,630 --> 00:20:00,840 And it also in some ways slightly compromised the the weight of the love suit exchange. 198 00:20:01,130 --> 00:20:07,110 What I really enjoyed just before that moment in the in the wedding scene, 199 00:20:07,110 --> 00:20:14,380 the wedding that isn't and that if they'd had that taking place on a sort of plinth and a sort of golden double layer tent, 200 00:20:14,460 --> 00:20:18,080 which was a bit like a wedding cake and a bit like an altar, and, 201 00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:27,180 and they left hero on that plinth in a way that felt to me to be humanly implausible, 202 00:20:27,180 --> 00:20:34,020 that if you if your friend was exposed in that way, you just want to get her into some small, 203 00:20:34,020 --> 00:20:37,349 quieter, more sheltered space and that the production, 204 00:20:37,350 --> 00:20:45,850 the blocking of the production left her in that very in that sort of exposed space for an uncomfortably long time. 205 00:20:45,870 --> 00:20:53,249 She was almost like a sort of Lavinia figure, you know, bleeding whilst other things go on around her. 206 00:20:53,250 --> 00:20:56,370 And that that irked quite a lot of her performatively. 207 00:20:56,370 --> 00:21:00,839 And it was a slightly sort of petulant child like hero we got. 208 00:21:00,840 --> 00:21:07,080 And so it was a it was a big ask of anybody to be that exposed for that long in a moment of that kind of pain. 209 00:21:07,500 --> 00:21:13,350 But after the violence, such as it isn't such very temperate violence in this production, 210 00:21:13,350 --> 00:21:22,200 it can one prepares to be incredibly shocked as as the misogyny is unleashed and that they didn't take it into the high key. 211 00:21:22,200 --> 00:21:24,779 I had been expecting it, but nevertheless, 212 00:21:24,780 --> 00:21:30,000 after the men have gone and believing her to have fainted and that she's going to be announced as dead subsequently. 213 00:21:30,420 --> 00:21:33,510 And then Benedict makes his sort of statement of with. 214 00:21:35,530 --> 00:21:45,190 There was a wonderful moment with Beatrice, who then is who is stilled as she listens with a kind of attentiveness and an acuity to Benedick, 215 00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:56,410 breaking from those male bonds and deciding to stand with this committed community in pain, which is actually a sort of female dominated community. 216 00:21:56,410 --> 00:22:02,750 And that he it feels. It felt to me in the production that it had been a sort of rhetorical game. 217 00:22:02,750 --> 00:22:06,469 Even when have you called the Benedick? Even that was part of a game. 218 00:22:06,470 --> 00:22:13,730 But he won her by being right minded in a very difficult human moment, 219 00:22:14,930 --> 00:22:21,740 but in some way to an audience who are who are looking for the familiar and the foreign, you know, I know how this bit might play. 220 00:22:21,750 --> 00:22:28,190 Yeah, I know the kind of patterns it's fallen into in the past. In what way are they going to, as it were, acquiesce to that? 221 00:22:28,190 --> 00:22:32,719 And in what ways are they going to resist it and surprise me in terms of how they're doing it? 222 00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:39,020 So they kill Claudio? Yeah. You know, it was a real surprise to me that that was played with quite that bite and speed 223 00:22:39,020 --> 00:22:45,110 and for laughs and the exposure of hero on the plinth wedding cake altar thing. 224 00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:49,010 Similarly, it was something I wouldn't have thought of doing. 225 00:22:49,010 --> 00:22:53,780 And was it kind of resonated across plays, across productions as well? 226 00:22:54,380 --> 00:23:02,090 Mm hmm. I wanted to go back to the in to the gender war thing, which in some ways does sit at the heart of the play. 227 00:23:02,090 --> 00:23:06,260 And these men arrive with their sense of themselves as war heroes, 228 00:23:06,260 --> 00:23:13,309 and they arrive into a world that is that they know their way around far as well, and that is anxiety provoking. 229 00:23:13,310 --> 00:23:20,000 And they start making that sort of nervous joking almost as soon as they enter about cuckolding and the 230 00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:25,760 kind of in meshing that when that might happen to one and how one might be rendered a fool quite easily. 231 00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:36,610 And so when the dungeon plot takes off, it's, it's obscenely fast that their nervousness is converted into I, 232 00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:41,330 I knew it and then misogyny and violence thereafter. 233 00:23:41,330 --> 00:23:44,900 But of course, as we were talking about it at the interval, 234 00:23:45,260 --> 00:23:52,520 that sense of how come the man with all of their competence but all of their nervousness is and all of their latent misogyny, 235 00:23:52,520 --> 00:23:56,810 which only needs to be scratched very slightly in order to be unleashed. 236 00:23:57,740 --> 00:24:08,540 But that male world has been interestingly compromised by casting Don Pedro as a woman and renamed Don Pedro, 237 00:24:09,110 --> 00:24:13,399 and that she is then collusive in the male violence. 238 00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:17,540 And we want her to break out from that and show some solidarity. 239 00:24:17,780 --> 00:24:22,669 And in some ways she has been, you know, with the sort of the zeal of the new convert almost. 240 00:24:22,670 --> 00:24:26,930 She's as as much in the misogynist camp as any of them. 241 00:24:26,930 --> 00:24:35,389 And we are the more disappointed. But but her. I want to just to return to that because it was such an interesting and such a starkly brave 242 00:24:35,390 --> 00:24:40,280 piece of casting that actually cut into some of the patterning of the play and unsettled it. 243 00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:46,640 And the disruptions were sometimes useful and sometimes significantly disquieting. 244 00:24:48,380 --> 00:24:55,160 And I think the difference between sort of cross casting and cross gendering in the moment, 245 00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:57,610 in our Shakespeare moment, is actually is a very interesting one. 246 00:24:57,620 --> 00:25:06,370 You know, are you saying actors play roles and those roles are discontinuous with their bodies in lots of different ways? 247 00:25:06,380 --> 00:25:13,070 Or are you saying we change these characters so that they fit these different, different actors? 248 00:25:13,820 --> 00:25:18,530 I mean, I was glad to have the props. 249 00:25:18,530 --> 00:25:24,590 What my expectation of the play undone by this. 250 00:25:26,100 --> 00:25:35,190 But I thought that the solidarity of the women in the in the marriage scene. 251 00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:40,000 Was very uncomfortable and discomfort is a good thing isn't it. 252 00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:48,040 In the theatre was was uncomfortable with the production kept quite quite rightly the the complete 253 00:25:48,550 --> 00:25:58,750 lack of remorse that is shown by Don Pedro and Claudia when they meet Leonardo and and Antonio. 254 00:25:58,750 --> 00:26:03,910 And it's only when they realise that in fact he wasn't unfaithful, 255 00:26:04,360 --> 00:26:11,530 that there's any dent in their merriment and they're picking a fight with these these old men and, you know, strutting around. 256 00:26:11,530 --> 00:26:17,169 And that's that made the Don Pedro a very, very uncomfortable, uncomfortable figure. 257 00:26:17,170 --> 00:26:21,490 And I thought the production was a little bit unclear whether we were supposed to think Don Pedro. 258 00:26:22,510 --> 00:26:27,760 Was a lesbian or sort of. Was inevitably so quiet. 259 00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:35,770 There was something odd and oddly modern, wasn't there, about the sense that Don Patrick could have been wooing Hero for herself? 260 00:26:36,730 --> 00:26:40,510 Nobody seemed to feel that that was any problem except that she should have been with Claudia. 261 00:26:40,570 --> 00:26:46,530 That was quite an interesting way in which that recasting worked and it didn't work, I thought. 262 00:26:46,570 --> 00:26:51,790 Yes. And then was consolidated in the sort of wooing of Beatrice. 263 00:26:52,270 --> 00:26:56,380 And Beatrice is quite nimble. 264 00:26:56,410 --> 00:27:02,480 Yes. Well, obviously, I sort of respect the offer, but I needed to know that's not my direction of travel. 265 00:27:02,560 --> 00:27:06,220 Travel. That's not where my inclinations tend. Like. 266 00:27:06,850 --> 00:27:09,130 I thought that little bit was actually quite dextrously handled. 267 00:27:09,340 --> 00:27:18,640 But those men, the dump, Maja, Claudio, even Leonardo a little bit let off by the play and very much so by this production, 268 00:27:19,120 --> 00:27:23,139 I thought by the sort of convenience of the Dom John character, 269 00:27:23,140 --> 00:27:30,430 so that that sort of irredeemable villainy of Don John allows everybody to go, Oh, Don Joan, he's wicked, isn't he? 270 00:27:30,430 --> 00:27:33,940 And he even he goes, Yes, I am. I'm a plain speaking villain. 271 00:27:34,180 --> 00:27:42,280 And so this uncompromising villainy exists in the play in a way that allows everybody to dump all of that which is rotten on him. 272 00:27:42,410 --> 00:27:52,860 Yeah. And for him to take it. Yeah. And that sort of implicitly exonerates a whole series of other things that have actually generated the, 273 00:27:52,870 --> 00:27:57,699 the major scarring in the play and that so the men are allowed redemption, 274 00:27:57,700 --> 00:28:04,359 they're allowed to get what they fundamentally want, which is to be hooked up with the right woman at the end and to feel morally, 275 00:28:04,360 --> 00:28:09,790 morally clean about it in the process, because one can devise brave punishments for Don, 276 00:28:09,790 --> 00:28:17,320 John and I in a sense of making the production feel wrapped up, 277 00:28:17,710 --> 00:28:24,850 especially in the context of a production that had been so brilliantly dancey with some super funky music all the way through. 278 00:28:25,150 --> 00:28:33,100 I thought that I will devise brave punishments for him at the end, but let's have a dance first, 279 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:40,180 and that the dance would be a real a real moment of healing, and that they would a indulgence. 280 00:28:40,450 --> 00:28:43,689 And it was very truncated. It was very truncated. 281 00:28:43,690 --> 00:28:49,389 And I didn't feel that enough. I wasn't given enough time to feel the openness of the ending. 282 00:28:49,390 --> 00:28:56,650 So there were the troubling resonances were still very much present and that there wasn't enough dancing to banish it at the end. 283 00:28:56,650 --> 00:29:01,510 And maybe that's a good thing, because actually banishing it is a slightly false ending. 284 00:29:01,510 --> 00:29:05,290 In some ways it's recognising that we haven't solved things, we haven't cured things. 285 00:29:06,370 --> 00:29:13,360 But in the context, in the context of a production that had gone so big on such brilliant dancing, 286 00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,720 I kind of craved a little bit more than we were offered there. 287 00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:27,580 And that, you know, it's a play that refuses to redeem Don John because it kind of wants presumably us to feel that we can reconcile, 288 00:29:27,580 --> 00:29:35,500 reconcile ourselves to it, to a decent ending for the other men, despite what's been released into into this world. 289 00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:41,409 But, you know, as you like it, which is the next year, isn't it? It's less than a year later as you like. 290 00:29:41,410 --> 00:29:51,100 It has a sort of jokey ending which Duke Frederic is converted at the end, allows itself the rhetoric of we will we will redeem villainy. 291 00:29:51,100 --> 00:29:53,470 No, there is no villainy that is irredeemable. 292 00:29:54,910 --> 00:30:01,930 But Shakespeare doesn't allow himself that with Don John, presumably in order to allow Claudio to get his girl. 293 00:30:03,980 --> 00:30:07,010 Yeah. The play bent over backwards, doesn't it, to make that okay. 294 00:30:07,010 --> 00:30:12,020 And that's so interesting given what you started by saying about how setting up those later plays. 295 00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:17,510 I mean, Shakespeare's not satisfied with this version of it, you say, because keep scratching away at this scenario. 296 00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:21,319 Yeah, we've had to go in Merry Wives of Windsor, I guess. 297 00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:24,890 Have we already. Probably. We're going to head on to seeing it again. 298 00:30:26,210 --> 00:30:35,490 Yes. And it does feel like a a playwright who enjoys the generic spending of rich material. 299 00:30:35,530 --> 00:30:38,899 Yeah. So get going. Give me a story. I write the story of this time I'll take. 300 00:30:38,900 --> 00:30:42,660 The woman has been wrongly accused of sexual infidelity. I'll show it. 301 00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:46,129 You with a comic spin? Much, too. Here we go. Yeah. All right. 302 00:30:46,130 --> 00:30:49,190 Same story. Woman wrongly accused of sexual infidelity. 303 00:30:49,190 --> 00:30:52,190 I'll show you the tragic spin. Othello. 304 00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:56,899 Yeah. And then she is Perth. And that. Let me reflect on much ado. 305 00:30:56,900 --> 00:31:00,410 Let me reflect on Othello. Neither of them is quite satisfying. 306 00:31:00,410 --> 00:31:08,900 I would like to believe the could be a way back, but the way back that I found within those kind of comic generic structures was, was too easy. 307 00:31:09,140 --> 00:31:12,890 I need to make it harder and I need to make I need to make the ending more 308 00:31:12,890 --> 00:31:18,560 fractured and more pained than I was able to do within those comic structures. 309 00:31:18,590 --> 00:31:21,260 Let's go to them next. Okay. I'll see you there, Anna.