Anyone who knows me would be surprised at my choice for a trip to the theatre as demonstrated in the following photos.
The only reason I found myself at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (apart from the fact that I had never seen anything there before) was to support Andrew Lloyd Webber and his fabulously expensive restoration of the theatre. In my post of the 14th April 2021 I included an article in The Times and said it might be years before a Shakespeare play was staged. And here we are four years later and I'm stuck with this lot. Thanks Andrew for using Jaime Lloyd. I even mentioned back then that the actors might need mikes for this huge auditorium and so they did in this production.
The reason being was the light show and the awfully loud dance music that was on offer as we took our seats. I knew then we were in for something different. The RSC have been known to modernise some Shakespeare productions, songs and dancing, but this is strictly for the young. Before I start on the "play" let's me just say I had one of the best seats in the theatre. Sixth row on the left hand side on the edge of an isle. So my view was actually across the isle so pretty much unobstructed. Unlike maybe those in even more expensive seats in the middle (and mine was a horrific £95 but worth it for the view if not the tight legroom. I had thought that Andrew had said his restoration would be more spacious.
We have a completely bare stage, a song to start with all the pink ticker tape falling down as it does at various times. The only props are the eight small bucket seats for the cast. In the first act the actors are always on stage, either acting or seated. Somehow the director or someone must have got fed up with this for the second half. The lighting was very good but added to the modernistic feel. A song to start and here were Hayley Attwell as Beatrice (top photo) and Tom Hiddleston as Benedict (next photo down). His entrance to a cacophony of screams from some young women in the audience. (That was a first for me). More screams later when he strips off his shirt. Unbelievable.
Now these two stars are very good actors. Much of what they were asked to do was excellent. But something was missing. I thought this pay was renowned for the sparks that flew between the two. I didn't see any. They were certainly there in the superb RSC production I went to see in Stratford (see post 23rd October 2014) where it held me "spellbound, wonderful". But their bickering here just felt just silly. It felt somehow that director Jaime Lloyd had seen the play at Stratford and went for the exact opposite. The best part of this production was when the Beatrice and Benedict are hiding at different times to hear the others (who know they are there) extol the virtues of the other. This can always be knock about scenes and those that involve Hiddleston are the best of the evening.
There are lots of reviews on the internet from "I couldn't wait to get home. Tom Hiddleston fans will delight in his winks, rear end wriggles" to a five star review in The Guardian and elsewhere. Am I just too old for this sort of thing? However, I had promised myself a Shakespeare play at The Lane, and this was it.
Below is a picture from that marvellous production at the RSC in 2014.
I was early arriving in London for this matinee, so I had time to look at some of the stations on the new Elizabeth Line: Paddington, Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road. They were fine. I took some photos, but there are better ones on the London Transport Museum website: "The Elizabeth Line - Ten Bold New Stations". Here are a couple of mine.
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