{"id":922,"date":"2014-06-20T18:32:46","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T17:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=922"},"modified":"2014-06-20T18:41:08","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T17:41:08","slug":"off-with-their-heads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/06\/off-with-their-heads.html","title":{"rendered":"Off with their heads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NP<\/a><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t move for gilt and ermine in London theatre. At the annual state opening of Parliament <\/a>\u2013 pantomime for one night only! \u2013 poor Elizabeth II must mouth her government\u2019s platitudes, but on stage, monarchs get lines that she can only dream of.<\/p>\n

King Charles III<\/em><\/a>, Mike Bartlett\u2019s beady vision of monarchy future, will soon transfer to the West End, joining Moira Buffini\u2019s Handbagged<\/em><\/a> about monarchy present (a splendid slugfest between Queen and Thatcher). The RSC disinters monarchy past in Shakespeare\u2019s Henry IV<\/em> <\/a>plays (reaching London this winter) and adaptations of Hilary Mantel\u2019s prize-winning novels set at Henry VIII\u2019s court. In heritage Britain, plays about monarchs are never simply fantasy. Deference to the shiny crown? It\u2019s how we still live.<\/p>\n

\"Marion<\/a>

Marion Bailey in Handbagged. Photo: Hugo Glendinning<\/p><\/div>\n

History plays can show the world changing \u2013 becoming our own. Elizabethan chronicles staged the death of kings \u2013 abdication, usurpation, assassination. Richard II<\/em> was famously considered incendiary, and the mere choice to have an actor represent a king raises the possibility of recasting. The plays contained subversive potential. Handbagged<\/em> and King Charles III<\/em> are new works toying with an archaic social structure. History plays offer critical distance, make change imaginable.<\/p>\n

If Elizabethan plays sunder monarchy and divinity, then Mantel\u2019s Wolf Hall<\/em> <\/a>and Bring Up the Bodies<\/em> <\/a>trace the emergence of government by bureaucracy. Nothing is more terrifying than a spreadsheet used with intent. Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII\u2019s right hand, works through the account book and executioner\u2019s axe \u2013 pointing toward Stalin as well as Capitol Hill. It\u2019s alien and modern all at once, as the best historical fiction can be.<\/p>\n

\"Lydia<\/a>

Lydia Leonard in Wolf Hall. Photo: Keith Pattison (also top photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

King Charles III<\/em> is that rarity, a history play about the future. Most histories tease us with foreknowledge \u2013 we know what must happen but not how we\u2019ll think or feel about it. Edward II must die \u2013 but who knew we\u2019d despise the culture that does for him? Mother Courage is caught in a war that can mean only slaughter \u2013 how will we view her carrion survival instinct? And Henry V will triumph at Agincourt \u2013 so why might we feel dread before battle, or unease in his victory?<\/p>\n

The RSC\u2019s Mantel adaptations play similar games, especially if Holbein\u2019s indelible images hover in your head. Nathaniel Parker\u2019s Henry VIII thrums with vigorous glamour, but the bloated silhouette <\/a>of middle age will claim him. Ben Miles\u2019 Cromwell may be sympathetic(ish) but the grim jowl and piggy eyes of the official henchman lurk (Mantel has a great episode about Holbein\u2019s portrait <\/a>which, Cromwell complains, makes him look like a murderer. Cue tactful silence). The executioner\u2019s swing, like destiny\u2019s stroke, bides its time even as Anne Boleyn is in her pomp and Cromwell clambers to prominence.<\/p>\n

Is this why history plays can seem conservative? If the end is known, what is there to play for? Why bother imagining a doomed revolution? This tension is nicely deployed by Bartlett in King Charles III<\/em>, for\u00a0the only character with a reforming agenda \u2013 of a kind \u2013 is the meddling monarch who should keep his privileged paws off our laws, but who is also the only character asserting the imperatives of free speech. Attempts to declaw a turbulent monarchy are made by younger royals who recognise the brand value of impassive throwback nostalgia.<\/p>\n

Speaking of throwback nostalgia\u2026 The RSC\u2019s Mantel offers a six-hour whirl of plush, sober frockage. Mike Poulton adapts the plot with dogged clarity, but does he even begin to adapt the novel? Cromwell\u2019s consciousness is a glory of contemporary fiction. It occupies a continuous third-person present \u2013 we stand beside him but see through his eyes. He assesses the world through his own unsentimental gaze, and we watch him through Mantel\u2019s equally unflinching focus. The novelist has given the project her blessing<\/a>, but her unique voice \u2013 a forceful, disillusioned reflection \u2013 is never heard.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unfair to ask any play to offer identical pleasures to its source. But is it also unfair to suggest that, if you\u2019re going to adapt something brilliant, you could be a tiny bit brilliant yourself? Poulton\u2019s craftsmanship is strictly flat-pack. The plays\u2019 four-square construction contains no surprises. Cardinal Wolsey\u2019s ghost periodically drops by for a chat, but Cromwell has no soliloquy to reel us in with complicity, let alone more daring games with time, space or form. It\u2019s all giggling court ladies and staunch chaps harrumphing about the succession.<\/p>\n

From my perch in the very back row, I missed any subtleties \u2013 anything could have been going on under those caps. At a distance you depend on voices (beefy) and bodies (always in motion \u2013 Henry\u2019s court was a terrified swirl of postman\u2019s knock). In Jeremy Herrin\u2019s restless production, Cromwell seems less engineer of the action than its reluctant victim \u2013 each time he resolves to leave the stage to visit someone, they arrive.<\/p>\n

James Wood<\/a>\u2019s lovely critique of Mantel says her novels \u2018make the stories fragile again, with everything at suspenseful risk.\u2019 She knows, he says, \u2018that novelists are creators, not coroners, of the human case.\u2019 Playwrights too and, given half a chance, actors. Mantel\u2019s novels are borne by thought, and thought can be dangerous. Shakespeare\u2019s histories shove old-new imaginations (Falstaff, Richard III) into time-stained stories. That\u2019s what history can do on stage \u2013 or, of course, it can comfort you with pageants.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter at @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can\u2019t move for gilt and ermine in London theatre. At the annual state opening of Parliament \u2013 pantomime for one night only! \u2013 poor Elizabeth II must mouth her government\u2019s platitudes, but on stage, monarchs get lines that she can only dream of. King Charles III, Mike Bartlett\u2019s beady vision of monarchy future, will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}