Roman Tragedies Barbican 2017

No, Kings of War audiences had to stay in the auditorium, but were at least given an actual interval which made it slightly easier to go to the toilet without fear of missing anything.

Wow! I didn't realize just how many insdustry people were there. I did see Ruth Wilson, Kate Fleetwood, Angus Wright and also Leo Bill. Plus I spotted Ivo in the wings during curtain call, but I don't know when he showed up.

And John Heffernan.  I thought Antony and Cleopatra was phenomenal (apart from Enobarbus's death).  Completely felt the obsession between the two.  And the greatest ever Charmian.

Also saw this yesterday, saw Ruth Wilson, though missed the other famous faces.

I did pretty much what Xanderl did (above), in that I sat on the stage for Coriolanus (sat next to Maria Kraakman at one point, who later ended up ruling the universe as Octavius Caesar), but decided to return to the stalls the moment Hans Kesting showed up, and stayed there for the next four hours. Being on the stage is a bit like being on stage in a Jamie Lloyd production, in that the other side get all the face time, which means you end up watching one of the tiny tellys on stage to see the actors' faces, which is silly as there's a cinema size screen on the other side.

Hans Kesting made a massive impression on me as Richard III in the Kings of War (the best of Van Hove's amazing troupe, for me), so I just had to return to the stalls to see his performance front on.  And in fact, what you get is the exact mirror of Kings of War, in that the latter two plays blend together to form one perfect whole. Whereas in Kings of War, the new whole was "The Rise and Fall of Richard III," here the new whole is "The Rise and Fall of Marc Antony."

This latter combo is magnificent, with Kesting's Marc Antony speech a throbbing moment to moment miracle of acting, from the moment he tears up his speech, pretending to speak off the cuff, to his apparently agonised empathy with Brutus, slumping to the floor, apparently powerless, but actually just catching the audience off guard as a King Kong of ferocity seems to take him over, which giant monkey's gait he seemed to take on as he suddenly feigned leaving the auditorium only to return as a quivering quaking beast of an orator.

From first to last, Kesting's Antony was a marvel, and it was great that Chris Nietvelt's Cleopatra was his mercurial and changeable match, her flighty hilarious tantrums dissolving into a heartbreaking gravitas (her final speech did flag in the middle, but was tremendous either side of the middle).

The experience of joining the actors for the Coriolanus appetiser did serve to make me feel part of the hoi polloi of it all, so that by the time the main Kesting course played out, I was devastated. A crushingly brilliant piece of theatre, even better than Kings of War for me, on account of feeling more part of it.

5 stars!

So reductive to equate Oresteia with this. Almost to miss how directors borrow/pay homage/steal from each other and it is being sort of shock, like being surprised that politicians could be so biased towards one point of view. Nunn riffing off Peter Coe/Sean Kenny, Brook putting Brecht and Artaud in a blender to create Marat/Sade. Hell, was Katie Mitchell refracting Van Hove when she started using live video or was it vice versa? Some decent historical perspective please?

Here's Andrew Haydon who opens his essay-review by pointing out moments of intersection between Icke's Oresteia and other European work and who then proceeds to ignore it because it - doesn't - matter.

postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-oresteia-almeida-london.html

That's even before we get onto the wholly different Vanya, 1984, Red Barn and such that pay no homage to Van Hove at all.

(The opening sentence of the following refers to a now deleted section).

You mean the Angus Wright who was magnificent in Oresteia, Master And Margarita etc. And who regularly works with Katie Mitchell (Cherry Orchard, Wastwater, Seagull etc,)?

(methinks Parsley belatedly realised that, hence the deletion of the comment on how indicative it was that Icke uses Wright in productions)

I love Mitchell's work but she is no better or worse than Icke (older, which counts for volume, though). I found a lot of Mitchell's nineties work was like watching Brook but so what? Then again, Icke and Vanya were similar but was that Brook or Mitchell or........

I saw Forbidden Zone.

I saw 1984 twice.

Saying one well respected director (or actor etc.) is 'better' is like saying that strawberries are 'better' than steak. It's just differences in and limitations of taste.

Have people honestly been operating under the idea that Robert Icke *isn't* heavily influenced by European directors? How funny. 

Just because Katie Mitchell's productions have been unpopular doesn't mean she is a genius.

Also some of her direction owes a lot to Yuri Lyubimov circa 1985. So hardly groundbreaking.

Thanks for that Robert

Just on a side issue, although Icke and Mitchell follow in the same general European "director's theatre" tradition one clear difference for me is that Icke can actually direct actors whereas Mitchell can't, for her actors are often just part of the staging to be moved around as appropriate (like Lyubimov). There are exceptions of course, her Uncle Vanya was very good indeed, but still not quite as good as Icke's at illuminating the play.

Also, there really isn't that much which is genuinely new in directing - for example van Hove's use of music in some of his productions reminded me of Ninagawa's productions from years before.