Emilia (Globe and Vaudeville Theatre)

[nash16]

Brand new play about the "dark lady of the sonnets".  Will run at the end of the summer for just 11 performances.

[oxfordsimon]

I thought it might be a radical retelling of Othello from a different perspective with that title!

[nash16]

Jan 3, 2018 20:31:49 GMT oxfordsimon said:

I thought it might be a radical retelling of Othello from a different perspective with that title!

I was hoping for that too.  Someone should scribe it.

[oxfordsimon]

We already have the Vogel take on the story

paulavogelplaywright.com/desdemona-a-play/

[peggs]

I thought that too, ahh well. Are they just announcing plays tomorrow, not dates?

[lynette]

It's the latest thing, the dark lady thing. At least two books on it published recently. One of them postulates that this woman whoever she might have been, wrote the plays. Another theory is that she was one of the black prostitutes who lived in Tudor London. I could go on. One of my pet subjects. My fave is that she was this Emilia Bassano, an Italian musician. So I guess this is about that one.

[Deleted]

Jan 3, 2018 23:00:38 GMT lynette said:

It's the latest thing, the dark lady thing. At least two books on it published recently. One of them postulates that this woman whoever she might have been, wrote the plays.

Oh. for god's sake, not another crackpot theory! Maybe Rylance is playing Francis Bacon who turns up to stake his claim as well.

[Deleted]

The writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, I know from her work with the immersive company Look Left Look Right. She also wrote Belongings and The Wasp done at Hampstead, which I didn’t see. The director for this was the assistant director for The Jungle at the Young Vic.

[profquatermass]

Jan 3, 2018 23:00:38 GMT lynette said:

It's the latest thing, the dark lady thing. At least two books on it published recently. One of them postulates that this woman whoever she might have been, wrote the plays. Another theory is that she was one of the black prostitutes who lived in Tudor London. I could go on. One of my pet subjects. My fave is that she was this Emilia Bassano, an Italian musician. So I guess this is about that one.

It was all explained in the Shakespeare episode of Doctor Who 

[lynette]

Sweet, I missed that. 😂😂

[dani]

I am planning to see this play by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and was wondering if anyone has seen it yet. Then I noticed that it doesn't start previews until Friday.


I'll be interested to hear what people think. I'm intrigued by the sonnets' dark lady and like Charity Wakefield, who is playing Shakespeare. Vinette Robinson, who's one of three Emilias, was very good, I remember, in Tender Napalm, not that I am expecting this to be much like that!

[lynette]

Yes, I’m going soon. One of the characters in the Elizabethan world that fascinates me.

[Deleted]

The set looks interesting

SPOILER: Click to show

Doesn't seem to be selling well, only offer I can see is a 2 for 1 deal which is not much use to any odd numbers of theatregoers!

[peggs]

Yes the set photo almost tempted me to buy. As you say @xanderl offer not much use if you're on your own.

[showgirl]

Yes, two-for-one offers are SO frustrating - why on earth not also offer one at half price? That way theatres would at least sell one ticket and appear equally welcoming to solo theatregoers - or, as xanderl says, groups of odd numbers.

[Deleted]

I watched some of their promotional videos and this looks great. I’m expecting good things.

[Steve]

Saw this last night, and loved it. This didactic feminist play sharpens it's attack, with an endless flow of winning humour and a hurricane of honest earned emotions, such that the affront of the rant is forgotten, and the meaning behind it hits home.

Some spoilers follow. . .

After a weak unfocused Hamlet, an OK Two Noble Kinsman (elevated by Francesca Mill's Jailer's Daughter), and a good "As You Like it" (distinguished by the most droll and humorous Jacques, Pearce Quigley), I was missing Emma Rice's joy and passion, but "Emilia" changes that. For me, this is the best of the season so far, and the first production I have loved of the new regime.

Like "Nell Gwyn," with as many laughs but more bite, this is the story of England's first female poet to be published in her own name, Emilia Lanier, who was the mistress of Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Henry Carey, and bore his child. The play's premise is that she is also the "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets, and it takes "dark" to mean "black" as opposed to merely Mediterranean looking. This means that the play is like a "Nell Gwynn"/"Shakespeare in Love" mashup, in which Shakespeare doesn't come out looking half so rosy as he did in the latter play, but nor is he entirely kippered as he was in Edward Bond's "Bingo."

Three actresses play Emilia from youth to middle age to old age, and all are acutely effective. But the most important is the first, Leah Harvey's young Emilia, as she gets to write her performance on an open book of experience, and she proves to be every bit as compelling as Gugu Mbatha Raw was in "Nell Gwyn," projecting innocence, intelligence, wit, playfulness, vulnerability, and in fact just about every quality to make us absolutely love her character. This is SO important, because the bitterness and righteous anger of Emilia's later incarnations would be impossible to swallow if we weren't roped into the story first. Leah Harvey is magnificent in this, projecting subtleties of moods, complex emotions, and quiet unaffected charisma in reactions. She was SO good, that after filling the role for an hour and a quarter, when the time came for Vinette Robinson to assume the role, I was ready to hate her.

To Robinson's credit, she won me over in record time, with an open, simple, passion and honesty that was extremely touching, and in due course, Clare Perkins took the acting baton and morphed Emilia into a powerful figure, a caustic orator, and a leader of women.

The play's trump card is it's casting of women as men. This is not gender blind casting, but specifically effective casting. It works a charm, as not only is it comedic to see one sex play another, it allows masculine traits that are being critiqued to be mocked playfully and satirised in performance as well as on the page.

The production contains some hilarious and effective women-as-men performances, of which Charity Wakefield's Shakespeare, Sophie Russell's Lord Thomas Howard and Amanda Wilkin's Lanier are especially outstanding: Wakefield shows Shakespeare's brilliance and wit, but also his aggression and opportunism, Russell has a riotous ball exposing an arrogant prig's hypocrisy and Wilkin nails the floaty vacancy of Emilia's flighty gay husband.

Of the women paying women, Sarah Seggari is the single best comic relief character of the Globe season so far, her brash nitwit of a character bringing a lightness and laser-like comic timing to her every utterance.

All in all, this play is a corker, a funny, honest, feminist production that builds a head of steam to such heights of tension that when it finally boiled over into that inevitable rant, a universal cheer eupted. And that's very hard to achieve, as usually it's 3 people cheering, and most people cringing.

For me, the overt preachiness only merits a half star being deducted from a production that really deserves a West End Transfer. 4 and a half stars.

NB: Showgirl alert: Book a matinee. Running time is 3 hours.

[foxa]

Oh good! I thought this sounded interesting - I'm seeing it next week. Thanks for the brilliant review, Steve.

[lynette]

Wow, sounds v good. Glad I booked this.

[showgirl]

Great review, Steve and thank you for the suggestion, though I do always go for a matinee at the Globe as even a warm day can turn chilly by evening. Now to find a ticket...

[bellboard27]

I very rarely leave at the interval, but I just did from this. I found the writing lazy and trite and the humour at the level of a student review. Many of the crowd seemed to be really enjoying it. So I’m probably in a minority. The cast are mostly pretty good, which for me was the only saving grace. I just thought there’s more to life than sitting through the rest of this.

[nash16]

Also saw this Friday night.

Have to agree with Bellboard27 that Morgan's writing, and its relentless didactic nature took us out of it far too often. The production matches what is written with big performances and lots of gurning characterisation for the audience, but it feels like being slapped with a comedy fish for 3+ hrs.

I think it would have been better as a shorter, more nuanced production; keeping the laughs, but being a bit more intelligent and subtle in its dramaturgy.

It certainly won't be West End bound, but as a chaotic piece of political theatre it will just about survive at the Globe.

[BurlyBeaR]

Merged

[Deleted]

Enjoyable enough first act but too long - if you're doing a Shakespeare then it's going to be around 3 hours, but if you're writing a new play for The Globe I think you should bear in mind that the audience are either standing up (in the rain, last night) or sitting on wooden benches. Liked the end of the first act with

SPOILER: Click to show

Emilia turning up in the audience and heckling

.

Maybe this will get trimmed a bit although they are only doing 11 performances so maybe not!

[Deleted]

I think it should be a rule that no show at The Globe should be more than 2 hours plus an interval.

See to it please Michelle.