The Life and Death of King John
\nby William Shakespeare
\nThe Eleventh Hour
\nQueen\u2019s Theatre, Adelaide. February 25.
\n Tickets $25 – $49. Bookings BASS 131 246
\nor adelaidefestival.com.au
\nUntil March 7.<\/p>\n
Vs Macbeth
\n by William Shakespeare
\nThe Border Project and Sydney theatre Company
\nOdeon Theatre, Adelaide. February 27.
\nTickets $16 -$39. Bookings BASS 131 246
\nUntil March 6.
\nWharf 2 season opens March 20 <\/p>\n
Even though, in its fiftieth year, the Adelaide Festival\u2019s theatre program is a diminished one, it has still made room for two of the Bard. Both are re-readings and deconstructions, one is perhaps Shakespeare\u2019s least-known play, the other among his most familiar. <\/p>\n
The Life and Death of King John, from the Melbourne company, The Eleventh Hour, is the work of two Williams. Dramaturg William Henderson, with director Anne Thompson and an able cast, has devised a framework for the performance which is a play in itself. <\/p>\n
It is Armistice Day, 1918 and led by their mortally wounded captain, four blinded and gas-affected soldiers, three nurses and a padre take shelter in a ruined barn awaiting orders on the cease-fire. They have been rehearsing a play, King John, about a kingdom in anarchy, a disputed monarchy, the capture of a young heir and the duplicitous role of cardinals. It is about tactical misjudgments and futile deaths \u2013 all linking events of the 13th century with the divisions and torments of World War One. <\/p>\n
With a startling, large-as-life set, in the cavernous Queen\u2019s Theatre, complete with stacks of barrels, wagons and drays, Anne Thompson creates a microcosm of the chequered history of Europe, as well as of the English, Scots and Irish . The players\u2019 thick accents cross all classes and regions, but the set pieces from Shakespeare\u2019s play, even if little known, are timelessly mythic in their implication \u2013 Lady Constance (Jane Nolan) bewailing her dead son Arthur, the henchman Hubert (Michaela Cantwell) vexed by his cruel orders to kill him, and the King (the excellent David Tredinnick) regretful for having given them. This is an ambitious, sometimes perplexing, but also rewarding production. <\/p>\n
It is the legend (and also a documented fact) of \u201cthe Scottish play\u201d that it is unlucky, and in their lively, witty, accident-prone version, the Border Project have built in an array of miscues, prop failures, rigging collapses and costume malfunctions, to remind us that Macbeth\u2019s own ruin is also a result of miscalculations, misreadings and failures of nerve. <\/p>\n
Skilfully avoiding mere comic undercutting of the narrative, the incipient calamities give the play an edge, and a sense of doom, that renders Macbeth and his scheming Lady (the outstanding Cameron Goodall and Amber McMahon) almost pitiful in their wickedness. Sam Haren\u2019s inventive direction uses paintball guns for executions, green exit lights for candles and the set itself as the theatre of war. Energised by David Heinrich\u2019s music and sound, this is an intelligent, affecting, and accessible Macbeth that hardly puts a foot wrong. <\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Life and Death of King John by William Shakespeare The Eleventh Hour Queen\u2019s Theatre, Adelaide. February 25. Tickets $25 – $49. Bookings BASS 131 246 or adelaidefestival.com.au Until March 7. Vs Macbeth by William Shakespeare The Border Project and Sydney theatre Company Odeon Theatre, Adelaide. February 27. Tickets $16 -$39. Bookings BASS 131 246 Until March 6. Wharf 2 season opens March 20 Even though, in its fiftieth year, the Adelaide Festival\u2019s theatre program is a diminished one, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7","category-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1692,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/1692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}