|
Cara Luna Theatre Bloody Poetry
by Howard Brenton
Directed by Rebecca Morahan
White Bear Theatre
13- 31 October, 2009
A review by James Hogg for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Howard Brenton, whose more recent output includes the BBC drama Spooks, wrote Bloody Poetry about twenty five years ago today. He wrote it in the early eighties, partly as a response to the political climate at the time, in which he and his friends felt increasingly isolated and ostracised for their views within their own country. Although the play was originally going to be based on Percy Bysshe Shelley, Brenton widened the scope of the piece to take in the convoluted relationships the poet had with two women, his second wife Mary Shelley and Claire Clairemont, and his contemporary poet Lord Byron. One can see why - the play examines the lives of these four as they are forced out of England by the scandal exposed in their private lives, which in turn results from their own personal beliefs. Although their poetry is popular and in demand back home, the poets are not. Shelley was continuously at the throat of conventional standards, a vocal advocate of atheism whose first marriage was collapsing due to his affair with Mary (then Mary Godwin); Byron had a scandalous affair with his own half-sister and then a messy and public divorce, so the two are almost parallels of some of the many harassed musicians and actors continuously held up to public scrutiny in the gossip magazines of today. Fleeing all this bad media, the two start the play at Lake Geneva, where Shelley has just arrived with his two mistresses. Claire is also one of Byron’s semi-jilted lovers, carrying his child, and hopes to enmesh Byron again by introducing him to Shelley. Mary is there to be with Shelley, loyally in love with him and barely tolerating the fact that he is also continuing an affair with Claire. Following them around like a bad smell is Byron’s unofficial biographer, Dr William Polidori, always wishing to be involved and always left out. This may seem confusing to read, but it never seems so during this excellent revival, where the clearly drawn and beautifully acted characters bring the twisted, four-way relationship of these famous rebels to painful life. Richard Holt gives an excellent Shelley, a slight man consumed by his passionate hatred for a society that condemns his personal morality as wicked; Ellie Turner is a formidable and driven Mary who holds the poet she loves to strict account for the fallout that his pursuit of his own ideals brings to them both, and the two together are a very believable unconventional couple, particularly in the electric first scene of the second act. Felicity Davidson (as Claire Clairemont) and Kate Malyon (as Shelley’s first wife, Harriet) both make for powerful and haunting presences, revealing the inevitable costs of affairs amongst friends. Alex Barclay is a splendidly vitriolic Polidori, perpetually wet and clad in black, desperately trying to get his second-rate hack writing accepted by the poets he must chronicle, and his appearance signalled the end of a slightly hesitant start and the beginning of a very commanding performance from the entire cast. James Russell’s George, the Lord Byron, seems a little anaemic at times compared to the wonderful obscenities he continuously spouts, but this is perhaps thankful, preventing the character becoming too much of a cartoon character. The play is wringing with watery images - storms on Lake Geneva, thundery rain in the night on which Mary begins to conceive Frankenstein, the canals of Venice and the shores of the Serpentine are all backdrops at various points. And the play’s hauntingly poetic language murmurs through it all, swiftly moving from out-and-out rhyming couplets, to the straightforwardly furious arguments of the couples, to Byron’s earthy vulgarity without pause or falter. Shelley gradually collapses under the weight of his own, impossible-to-achieve romantic ideals, but the language of the play remains uplifting, using the poet’s own The Masque of Anarchy to good effect in the closing moments. The costumes are spot on, the set simplistic but still evocative, the direction taut - this is a very good show, both moving and involving, very well acted and well worth seeing. Indeed, the show was a little late starting as the staff at the White Bear were trying to find extra seats to cram a packed house on to, possibly a good sign for things to come. ‘You are very beautiful, beautiful and strange,’ Claire says of Mary at one point, but it describes this eerie, echoing production just as well.
Box Office - 0207 793 9193 Website - www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk White Bear Theatre
Copyright © EXTRA! EXTRA All rights reserved
|
ouzens