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Show: Anne Boleyn
Society: Guildburys Theatre Company
Venue: Waverley Abbey House, Farnham & Merrist Wood, Guildford
Credits: Howard Brenton
Type: Sardines
Author: Frank Kaye
Performance Date: 10/07/2018
Anne Boleyn
Frank Kaye | 13 Jul 2018 14:06pm
Photo: Phillip Griffith, Guildburys Theatre Co
The opening night of Guildburys Theatre production of Anne Boleyn in the glorious setting of Waverley Abbey House was a multidimensional theatrical experience to be savoured. Howard Brenton created this ensemble work for the Globe Theatre and it is especially suited to strong amateur groups because few professional companies can afford such large cast productions. I counted at least twenty-five actors in the programme and all of them gave their all – which was appropriate because it so happened that on this opening night the England football team were doing the same in their own contemporaneous drama.
Jay Orbaum, the director, has created a brilliant ensemble production which, whilst acknowledging that we are having a picnic by the river on a glorious summer’s evening, he pulls no punches in confronting the realities of politics, religion and human behaviour. The director’s notes in the programme set out ambitious goals for the play ensuring that we view it through a lens of universally enduring issues of subjugation of women, the power of elites, self-serving greed and perhaps, most challengingly, the role of faith in modern life.
In this version of Anne Boleyn’s life, we see a woman who ultimately values her faith more than her life. Sarah Gibbons takes the title role and immediately grabs our attention as she addresses the audience with a blood-soaked bag in her hand. She also closes the play with an audience address using the very cleverly designed set to ensure that our aesthetic experience is book-ended through her eyes. Sarah’s performance on this opening night reflected the need to deliver this big role with competence and precision. In this she succeeded, and I am expecting that she will develop the performance over the course of the run. She engages the audience beautifully when she comes down onto the grass before us. She was more distant and vanilla when flattened by the microphoned sound on stage. She needs to avoid talking too much in profile especially when talking to King Henry.
The use of microphones was one of only two serious reservations I have about the performance. I sat on the grass in front of the stage in the first half and I found that taking the actors’ voices from the stage and pushing them through speakers on either side of the “auditorium” and combining this with the sound of the ensemble’s feet and the weird sound effects undermined the otherwise very effective positioning of the large cast on stage. In one case Derek Watts upstaged himself with the rustling of the paper in the hands of his character Simpkin. I moved up to the back for the second half to check whether the miking could be dispensed with. On balance I think it could as the second encounter between Anne Boleyn and William Tyndale and his followers away from the microphones was quite audible from the back.
The book ending by Anne is important as the play is really set in the time of James 1st, nearly one hundred years after her death, where he is dealing with the consequences of Anne’s actions. The time shifts are dealt with effectively and particularly effective is the positioning of King James prostrate at the front of the stage whilst Anne’s demise at the hands of Cromwell and Henry VIII is played out behind him.
The play has two interlocking stories. The first is the impending doom of Anne which is cleverly signalled by a swishing sword sound effect whenever an event progresses us towards that end. The second is the resolution of the fractures in the church post Henry’s various shenanigans with his many wives and mistresses. This last is dealt with in a brilliantly written but also beautifully staged scene in the second Act. All the clerics are in black and the key protagonists are played by women – a nice touch! Well done Jemma Jessop, Debby Dean and Tessa Duggleby.
All of the actors playing the main parts are competent and assured providing strong and appropriate characterisations with one exception which I will come to. The two kings are nicely done. Henry played by Glyn Rogers has a lovely entrance down through the audience and he retains our attention throughout. He has some nice interaction with Anne and is also well supported early on in each act by Howard Benbrook playing Robert Cecil. James, played by Tim Brown does not overdo the gay element of his character and his clinch with his lover George, played by Andrew Chalmers is nicely entertaining. Tim plays the Scottish king with appropriate charm and commands the big religious scene in the second act.
Paul Baverstock as Thomas Cromwell is a bit of a show stealer with his spider-like persona, beautiful costume and his quirky accent. Cromwell is both devious and intelligent and in particular he facilitates the linkage to William Tyndale and his followers. The two encounters between Anne and William take place in front of the stage on the lawn, one in daylight and the other in clever lighting, and are some of the most effective in the play. Graham Russell-Price is very strong as Tyndale and looks just right with his wild grey hair. This part of the play differentiates Howard Brenton’s work from the more traditional costume drama.
My other significant reservation about the performance was the characterisation of Cardinal Wolsey, played by Eddie Woolrich. It came across as rather shouty and one dimensional. This may have been a directorial decision to provide a contrast between Cromwell and Wolsey but it seemed to me to miss an opportunity to explore the progression from self-important, arrogant bully (bring anyone to mind?) to a pathetic figure shorn of the trappings of power, his acolytes and ultimately his head. We the audience need to be taken on this journey. Arguably it is the character with the greatest change in objectives in the whole play.
Another character worthy of mention is Lady Rochford, played by Claire Racklyeft, who stands out from the crowd from the beginning of the play and becomes more prominent as she becomes ever more distressed as she ends up betraying her mistress and suffering the usual fate. Sadly, the microphones picked up her emoting a bit too much and she sometimes upstaged other actors through no fault of her own.
The four minor parts of Simpkin, Sloop, George and Parrot are all both convincing and amusing though Stuart Morrison might be accused of mildly overdoing his supposedly scary antics (veering to pantomime). All the smaller parts were played with a real sense of truth and being “in-the-moment. Jay Orbaum has clearly been influenced by the developments in ensemble directing which started with the Meiningen Company in the Nineteenth Century where every person on stage is a real individual with a back story.
All of the elements of scenography (set design, costumes, colours, shapes) are very well done and the space is used well with the proviso noted below. There is a genius moment where the sliding book element of the set becomes the focus which alone is reason to go see this play. The French flag is clever and the quirky dance to start the second half is amusing. The music is nice. I am not sure about some of the sound effects which with the exception of the sword swish are somewhat incomprehensible.
As to the play’s ambitious goals – are they achieved in this production? In principle they are (Donald Trump is in town as I write, and one wonders if he would enjoy this show and realise that it is about everything he stands for and perhaps make him think) but in practice I think that there is a problem with the divergent nature of the venue. The audience are able to sit in an unbounded space and it is very difficult to draw the audience in to the dilemmas faced by the characters. It is best achieved when the actors are on the grass in a more intimate connection with the audience and also when Sarah is captured in the spotlight at the beginning and the end of the play.
This is a great night out and more thought provoking than the usual open-air theatre fare. Go and see it!
- : admin
- : 10/07/2018