The Shawshank Redemption
Wyndham’s
Othello
Trafalgar Studios
All change at Wyndham’s. The wayward sophistication and creative adventure of Michael Grandage’s first West End season has drawn to a close and been replaced by a karaoke version of The Shawshank Redemption. Smart move. Cameron Mackintosh, the theatre’s owner, must be hoping that this stale piece of air guitar will sharpen our appetite for Grandage’s return in 2010. The Shawshank copycat, directed by Peter Sheridan, has been cast with lookalikes in the Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman roles, reinforcing the impression that the priority is to cook up a comfort-food replica and not upset the punters with unfamiliar tastes. It’s a maddeningly average concept. But the show is still wonderful entertainment. It can’t fail to be. The brilliantly crafted storyline, with its false trails, unexpected climaxes and cosy Hollywood conclusion, inevitably works its schmaltzy magic. The film’s popularity rests on the happy fact that the set-up — a good-natured sophisticate unjustly abandoned among hostile brutes — feels like a definition of life itself. The principals, Kevin Anderson and Reg E. Cathey, acquit themselves creditably as the saintly convicts Andy and Red. And there’s a wonderful trio of prison bullies, led by the terrifying Joe Hanley, who roam the jail like Eton prefects assaulting newcomers and punishing upstarts by buggering them senseless.
A much-praised touring production of Othello starring Lenny Henry has arrived at the Trafalgar Studios. In the programme notes Henry denies the charge of ‘celebrity slumming’ and informs us that Shakespeare’s ‘passionate energy’ merits comparison with EastEnders. He’s a plucky soul but his acting credits (all the way from New Faces to CBeebies) confirm that nothing in his career has prepared him for this. He looks horribly exposed in the part and he acts as if trying to convince himself he’s being convincing. His gestures are unfelt, their range limited. Smiling through tears, raising a fist, rolling his eyes, pulling a frown. During longer rhetorical figures he slowly extends his hand and lets his fingertips stroke the peaks of imaginary mountains. Poetry is beyond him. ‘The tyrant custom, most grave senators,/ Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war/ My thrice-driven bed of down,’ comes out as if he were reading his bank details over the phone to Bangalore. His method seems to be to start like a genial teddy bear and gradually get more flustered and a bit louder. The Honey Monster turns into the Incredible Hulk. In the play’s final moments, with Desdemona slain, Emilia dying and all Iago’s murderous schemes laid bare, Othello reacts like a man whose builder has just doubled the estimate on the conservatory. And for some reason he performs the role in the accent of a Nigerian cab driver. A revealing, but perhaps not surprising, choice. After all, he calls Shakespeare slumming.
His bland, thoughtless performance is a neat fit for Barrie Rutter’s shouty and insight-free production. It’s set during the time of Upstairs Downstairs so everyone dresses like H.H. Asquith and carries a sword. The military uniforms are purple tunics and the trousers have silver braid down the hems so even a general looks like an elevator boy. The two-poster bed, with a curtain extending diagonally across the mattress, seems bizarre. Cassio has no beard even though it’s mentioned at a pivotal moment in the text. And how is the storm suggested? Some flashing lights and a drum roll, of course. Is there another way to do it? Iago has been badly miscast. Forget the malice and you have a complex, lovable, witty, flirtatious and resourceful daredevil with an extraordinary ability to analyse human motivation. A man of powers, in other words, and it’s amazing how much truth the arch-liar speaks. What’s needed is an attractive, worldly charmer who can hint at fallen greatness but Conrad Nelson is a balding grey scrap of a thing with the demeanour of a perky gas-fitter. His projection is weak and many of Iago’s best observations are lost. He emphasises the quality that needs least emphasis, wickedness, and he ends soliloquies with an Evil Leer and underlines his dissembling with a Mad Cackle which he even uses to mess up Othello’s final speeches as if dismayed that the line ‘From this time forth I never will speak word’ has deprived him of the chance to overact. But it’s not all bad news. The show’s highlight is the drinking song. Performed with great energy and including a skit on ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ played on the trombone, this burst of vaudeville must have taken days to rehearse. Here at last the script matches the ambition and scope of the production.
Comments