Categories: general-nonsense
Tags: General Nonsense
Date: 01 November 2009 17:50:42
So the cultured weekend continued last night, after a brief detour into "research land". We headed off to the Theatre Royal in Newcastle to see The Winter's Tale performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Ok, so Newcastle on what is apparently the busiest night the city has ever seen, (what one of the Street Pastor volunteers informed us in church this morning), is not quite Stratford, but it was still the RSC. For me splashing out on last night was a big deal!!!!
The play is one of Shakespeare's longer ones, (running at just under 3 hours). It has all the ingredients which make a good Shakespeare play. A king who engages mouth before brain, a queen with spirit, a lost child, a comedy duo (shepherd and son), a comic baddie, and the voice of wisdom, aswell as a few other characters.
The plot is not as simple as say The Tempest, but it is not particularly complex......and it has an interesting twist. Greg Hicks played an excellent Leontes and Kelly Hunter a rather good Hermione. The star of the show though, partly through Shakespeare's writing of the character was Noma Dumezweni who played Paulina. This was a distinguished cast though, as a brief flick through the programme showed, and they all played Shakespeare excellently.
The set was excellent, and showed the difference a ridiculously high ticket price can make. The most striking elements were the collapsing book cases and the trees which emerged from the rafters, one of them containing our first glimpse of Perdita, played by Samantha Young. This was no wobbly set, it was carefully crafted and excellently planned.
As I sat and watched I was struck by the talent involved and the way that there really is something special about watching Shakespeare performed well.
Afterwards I think I would have floated home if I hadn't needed to negotiate the surreal obsticle course which was Newcastle last night. For people who have never encountered Newcastle at the weekend I better explain. It is a 24 hour party town, the sort that hen and stag dos routinely head for. It is therefore not unusual to see fancy dress or completely under-dressed people in whether most of us would describe as cold. Being Halloween the city was in full swing; fancy dress abounded.