You haven't seen Shakespeare adapted until you've seen Propeller. My friend Marianne, a long-time Propeller groupie who introduced me to them, prompted her friend Charlie and I to travel to Cheltenham with her to see both the plays they're touring this season - Comedy of Errors and Richard III.
Propeller are an all male company who perform modern, high energy, accessible, addictive Shakespeare. They tour two plays at once and this is the first time I've had the chance to see both on the same day. If you love Shakespeare, theatre, comedy or slasher horror or if you have any plans to study or perform Shakespeare at any point in the future EVER I can't recommend enough that you do the same.
Comedy of Errors seems to be performed all over the place at the moment. It's a ridiculous play, not one but two sets of identical twins separated as children in a storm at sea. For some reason each ends up with the same name as their twin, years later Antipholus and his servant Dromio stumble into a strange town where everyone seems to know who they are and confusion and hilarity ensues. Propeller recognises the ridiculousness of the play and instead of trying to make the series of events seem plausible, adds more ridiculousness. So the slapstick in the play is accompanied by comedy musical sound effects, the camp policeman is straight out of the YMCA and his leather trousers squeak when he walks. The Abbess wears a short nun’s habit with fishnets and purple suede boots and we are even treated to the sight of Tony Bell running bollock naked through the audience with a lit sparkler sticking out his behind.
To the uninitiated this kind of interpretation might sound like a lack of respect for Shakespeare's work. But Propeller's productions work where others fail because they understand the plays inside out and a real love of Shakespeare is what comes across. They just want the plays to be as vibrant and relevant to today's audience as they would have been to an Elizabethan audience. We laughed all the way through, and so did the rest of the packed audience.
After laughing until our stomachs ached at the vibrant, colourful spectacular, we returned after dinner to see Richard III after dinner in a merry mood. We were not prepared for the same company to come back and rip out our stomachs, leaving the three of us speechless and for a good ten minutes afterwards feeling, as I eventually managed to comment to Marianne, a bit like we'd been mentally raped.
With the same cast and similar innovation, it was as if Richard III was a dark and distorted mirror version of Comedy of Errors. Like a photographic negative, the Hyde to the friendly and funny Jekyll. We were confronted with a stage decked out like a bleak mental asylum, actors staring out at us from masks that looked like bandaged faces. This bleak chorus shifted medical screens around to reveal characters, held victims down and threw around the ever increasing pile of body bags. And the bodies don't half stack up. The plot of Richard III is basically a list of murders and here every one was more creative, we saw disembowelling, chainsaws, a mother crying over heads in a jar. And behind it all the horrific but charismatic character of Richard himself played by Richard Clothier. It's a masterful performance, there's the classic repellent villainy, but you can also see how King Richard manipulates the world around him to climb to the top. He's somehow magnetic, enigmatic. He's also at points hilariously funny. The production doesn't shy away from black comedy and this was what really added depth to both the title character and the production as a whole.
It's not just me who loved this; critics are saying the variety in Clothier's performance makes his Richard III better than Laurence Olivier's. Edward Hall is a genius and this is the most riveting Shakespeare you are ever likely to see. If you can only see one of the plays, see Richard III. But DON'T do that, see them both or once you have seen one you will wish you had tickets for the other, sell your grandmother, sell your house, travel to Madrid just BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW. Here you, go here are the tour dates. I'm going to go again and I still have 38 other plays to see this year!
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