A week later than planned, I got my lovely evening of
communal entertainment on the grass.
Not the Olympic closing ceremonies, nor the Blur concert, but a six-man
production of Macbeth on a basic stage set up on the lawns of The Vyne. It was magnificent.
I’ve never enjoyed Macbeth more. Part of this, I confess, is that we were watching a tightly
edited version that came in at exactly two hours. All the famous bits remained, but much detail and back story
had been trimmed to keep things moving.
After all, as one of the actors said to us afterwards, most scholars now
think the plays are so long, and have so much repetition, because the original
audiences wandered in and out.
Shakespeare couldn’t have imagined an audience sitting in rapt silence,
giving complete attention. When
that’s what you’ve got, why not trim the play for a more straightforward
delivery? The result, in this
case, was a fast-paced drama with the feel of a modern action thriller. No time to get bored and, more importantly,
not enough time for the effects of sitting on the ground to seep into your
bones.
Although, if you have to sit on the ground, this is a damned
fine place to do it. The Vyne is
our local National Trust property, just two miles from our new place. (For an earlier post about the house,
click here.) Its Tudor, red brick
heart is graced with a classical portico of white stone, the first ever put on
a private home in England. This
formal façade looks out over the North Lawn, which stretches down to the river,
and beyond that, pasture and woodland.
The actors built their stage … a simple wooden platform with a castle
tower as a backdrop … at the bottom of the lawn, just before the river. It was a gorgeous setting, although the
actors’ concentration was challenged by two flocks of wild geese landing with a
chorus of honks, and various other waterfowl chattering in the twilight.
Birds or not, we certainly had no problem with sound. Though we arrived late, we discovered
that the first third of the lawn was reserved for people who only had blankets. (Further back, lawn chairs and folding
tables proliferated.) Thus we
ended up 10 feet from the stage, able to hear every word and see every
expression.
This rough and ready style is probably a lot closer to the
way these plays were originally performed. (Except for the aforementioned editing, of course.) Outside of places like The Globe,
Elizabethan and Jacobean companies often set up in courtyards of coaching inns,
or great halls of noble homes. A
small band of men played all the parts, including the female ones. They made no attempt to be convincingly
female, besides the dresses. But,
let’s face it, if a man’s going to have an easy time with any of Shakespeare’s
women, it’s going to be with Lady Macbeth. We all know who wore the breeches in that relationship.
The acting style was a bit over-the-top, at times
excessively dramatic. But, like
the stage and the setting, it added a flavour of authenticity. When you’re belting it out to people at
the back of the lawn, it’s all about big voices and big movements. We probably noticed it more because we
were the equivalent of the groundlings, a stone’s throw from the action.
Groundlings stretched on tartan with a picnic hamper full of
Marks and Spencer goodies and bottles of Australian chardonnay. There, I suspect, a rather vast
improvement on our theatre-going forebears.
When it was all over, our multi-functional acting troupe
switched hose and doublet for shorts and tee shirts and disassembled their own
stage, while chatting to us about their interpretation. We had been impressed, then we were
charmed. No question about it,
we’ve discovered another “must” for the summer social diary.
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