For a change I was in the driving seat and managed it all the way to the top of the Rose car park without clipping a kerb once, something of a record for me. On the other hand I did stall once, so not quite a clear round.
Next stop, fish inspection on the upstream side of the bridge over the Hogsmill. As I recall, they were missing last time we looked but were back in force on this day. Large fish - say a foot or so long - on the left, small fish and fry on the right. The larger fish continuing to impress by their ability to stay in one place in fast flowing water while appearing to be hardly moving at all.
Stalls reasonably full for this matinée performance.
Staging good, fairly bare and with a return visit of the up-and-down table used in the wars. Costumes vaguely Tudor/medieval which is how it should be. A sprinkling of swords, also how it should be. Only marred by the inclusion of two computer screens, maybe four feet by three feet, high up left and right. Sometimes used to display battle scenes (presumably to make sure that we knew that there was a battle going on), sometimes to repeat the face of the actor with the stage. There were also some unpleasantly loud sound effects and musics - with antique music and instruments nowhere to be seen on this occasion. All rather tiresome.
We were sitting in the very front row, with only a sprinkling of people on cushions between us and the stage. Too near for me: something of the same problem as I have sitting at the front of concerts, with too many sights and sounds that one could do without. I also wondered why people did cushions: I could not manage an hour on a cushion, never mind three, and it beat me why people did not grudge the time but did grudge the very reasonable cost of a proper seat - very reasonable that is, compared with the west end.
I was disappointed with the standard of the acting, about on a par with the Globe. Faulconbridge adequate. John sometimes good but far too inclined to play the petulant child. Elinor seemed more like a doting older mum than the mover and shaker she was, or at least had been. Constance at least had spirit, even it sometimes it did not feel quite right.
But I found the play interesting, with plenty to interest the audience of its time and the audience of today. Or at least me.
Afterwards I pondered about the dimly remembered dictum that a play should consist of one action at one time and in one place - with this play running through the 20 years or so of John's reign in something under three hours. A chap who, according to my Oxford History, has had an unfairly bad press. He was not that bad, although he was subject to temper tantrums and he was unlucky to be lumbered with an unsustainable French empire at a time when the French had a good king. He also had his fair share of trouble with the church - although his speeches on the subject in the play seemed to rather anticipate the disputes of the Tudors, hundreds of years after his day.
I shall go again for seconds, despite the review from the Guardian included above.
PS: perhaps it would be helpful if Muslims went along and paid special attention to the way that we infidels regulated relations between the spiritual and secular worlds - something which they do not yet seem to be much good at.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-end.html.
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