Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
A Mad World, My Masters! is a comedy by Thomas Middleton, a Jacobean playwright best known for the tragedy The Changeling. Like many Middleton plays, A Mad World, My Masters! belongs to the sub-genre of city comedy, satirising the perceived amoral lifestyle of the inhabitants of the city.
Middleton’s inherent cynicism shines through the humour of the script, the plot being set in motion by the avaricious schemes of Dick Follywit, who plots to deceive his grandfather and swindle his inheritance before it is due. Meanwhile the courtesan Frank Gullman helps to lay the path for the lustful Penitent Brothel to seduce the wife of the jealous and paranoid Shortrod Harebrain, a subplot which adds nothing to the central storyline but features most of the funniest jokes. The script sparkles with real gems of bawdy wit, despite some lacklustre rhyming couplets and an occasional self-conscious habit of explaining the joke.
The highest praises must go to the cast, who tackled a challenging and relatively obscure Jacobean script without breaking stride. Students excelled in the smallest of roles in a cast apparently without any weak links. The leads, of course, were given ample opportunity to showcase their talents and did not disappoint. Ryan Lane was a tour de force as the deceitful Follywit and Will Edward’s Sir Bounteous Progress was a masterstroke of comic timing, bumbling malapropisms and good-natured idiocy.
The performances were, however, somewhat hampered by questionable direction and artistic choices. There was some dubious blocking, with masking commonplace, and the performance managed to include needless movement that attempted to make use of the vast stage while at other times actors stood stock-still until their allotted cues.
Considering the budget of this performance the set was rather underwhelming, being unpainted and generally appearing unfinished. Instead of committing to the lavishly detailed or sparse and suggestive, the set remained trapped uncomfortably between the two. The more impressive aspects of the stage, such as an array of retractable banners, were held back to add gravitas to the denouement, but would been far better employed to differentiate between the various estates the action takes place within. Similarly, the moveable set was only moved twice and the space revealed behind it was never used, rendering it superfluous. That said, the lighting and sound design was impeccable, which given the rather impressive rig of the space is perhaps only to be expected, and noteworthy incidental music was provided by Odinn Hilmarsson.
In spite of its flaws, A Mad World, My Masters! is a play seldom performed and here superbly acted in a performance space that is terribly underused. On these grounds alone it deserves recommendation.
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