Saturday 4 October 2008

LIBERTY @ Shakespeare's Globe, London

LIBERTY
World Premiere @ Shakespeare's Globe
By Glyn Maxwell
Directed By Guy Retallack
Designer: Ti Green
Composer: William Lyons
Choreographer: Paul Harris
PSM: Martin Hope
With: David Sturazaker, Ellie Piercy, Edward Macliam, Kirsty Besterman, Belinda Lang, Gregory Gudgeon, Jonty Stephens, William Lyons, Jon Banks, Clare Salaman


I was dragged kicking and screaming into the New Globe to see the final performance of Glyn Maxwell's new verse-play, Liberty. "Haven't we been subjected to enough theater covering the French Revolution?!" I whined obnoxiously to my calmer American compatriot. To be fair, I land here in England having been freshly subjected to the musical disaster that is the production of Tale of Two Cities currently desecrating the Broadway stage. That particular production was such a snooze-fest that I carry with me a "NO REVOLUTION BUT A BOUBLIL AND SHONBERG REVOLUTION" leaflet to hand out to budding writers and composers. Thank God, I have been swiftly and sharply proved wrong.


Liberty is a gleefully directed, fast paced slice of French Soap Opera. There is music, there is madness, lust, bourgeois fallen on hardship, implied rape, fetish, and the lopping off of heads. Personally, I could not ask for much more when dealing with a production on the Globe stage, except perhaps for an exceptional minimalist design, stellar acting, and a rousing masque, all of which were offered up, to my childish excitement. Even a brief (albeit disturbing) nod to puppets! Joy!

The verse is imperfect, but forgiven since the language is lovely enough in itself to transcend this issue. I haven't heard a modern playwright capture such a biting wit in a classical tone in recent years. It makes me ponder if perhaps Richard Nelson didn't just plain need more sex to make his recent Conversations In Tusculum wake up off the page. Are we audiences so base? So yearning for innuendo? Perhaps. Or perhaps, like Shakespeare, we recognize the need to place great love, tragedy and yearning against the backdrop of a few bawdy codpiece references in order to make it recognizable to our own lives. Glyn Maxwell knows that we relish the rake who drinks and beds the girls. And yet he presents this in such beautiful language that none of us feel dirty, but rather leave the theater an elevated breed of intellectual.

Liberty has a heart and soul pounding under it's historical skin, and I wish it the best of luck on it's current UK tour. I can offer no better compliment to all involved that to say "I want to know what happens next."




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