You know what to expect when people want to wave something about in a flirty Restoration comedy. Fan? Check. Snuff box? Check. Dagger. Wait, what? The Double Dealer is a young writer’s comedy that springily reinvents the rules. Restoration comedies are often tales of love and money, set in a contemporary London so precisely plotted that you could follow the action on Google Maps. But William … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the beer in Sweat
We don’t see the sweat in Sweat. It dries grimily on the skin, sinks into workclothes, or is sluiced off at home. In Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning drama, set in America’s rusting rust belt, sweat is the index of manual labour at the steelworks, effort and vigilance distilled to salty droplets. On your feet all day, straining back and bunions – yet aircon is reserved for management, who can sit … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the crown and buckets in Richard II
Richard II gives up power – though it’s not his choice. His cousin Henry Bolingbroke has returned from exile, led a rebellion, become king of the castle. Richard’s toppled monarch is now a dirty rascal. Shakespeare stages this concretely – a crown passed from one to another. The supposed divinity of majesty proves portable as a party hat. Richard, as often, reaches for an arresting metaphor: here, … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the balloons in Company
When your life is a perplexity – because your friends are needy-bossy, your cute boys aren’t quite right, your choices are urgent but confused – the last thing you need is balloons. Specifically, huge silver balloons bumping along behind you and reminding you how old you are. Bobbie (Rosalie Craig), heroine of Marianne Elliott’s gloriously rethought version of Sondheim’s Company, hoists herself … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the curtain in Wise Children
Show me a stage curtain and my heart pit-a-pats with anticipation. They’re a rarer sight nowadays, but if I’m sat in front of some plush red folds before an opera or ballet, I’ll stare and stare throughout the overture, alert for every telltale twitch, jiggling with longing for the curtain to rise and the show to begin. Is a curtain – that fabric lodged in the fabric of the building – a prop? … [Read more...]
Scream
My pal went into the Donmar’s Measure for Measure expecting a fight. She’d read that Josie Rourke’s production presents the cut-down text twice. The first, set at the time of Shakespeare’s 1604 premiere, where deputy governor Angelo attempts to coerce soon-to-be-nun Isabella into sex to save her brother’s life. The second, set today – same plot but with a female minister harassing a young … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the handkerchief in Othello
No, not that handkerchief, the one that convinces Othello that his wife has been unfaithful. When Shakespeare’s hero finds that Desdemona has apparently mislaid the cherished keepsake from his mother, decorated with strawberries and traced with delicate patterns, he becomes suspicious; when led to believe that she has casually handed it to another man, he becomes murderous. The 17th-century … [Read more...]
Propwatch: home comforts
The pineapple icebucket in Home, I’m Darling; toothbrushes in Home; the doll’s house in Aristocrats; nothing in Pericles. I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a home in the last year or so. That need for a place of safety, in which you have a stake, is pressing – but hard to find. All those phrases run through my mind, warming or mocking depending on the day. There’s no place like home. … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the drip in Allelujah!
You may think you know what it feels like to be patronised. Well, become an elderly person – or someone who cares for them – and prepare to have the crap condescended out of you. As soon as you’re in a vulnerable position, people who would otherwise talk to you as a relatively competent adult breeze into your home, and tell you how bad you are at making the bed, or a cup of tea. They make … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the pencils in Fun Home
The urge to rewrite the past is irresistible. To make yourself more cool, your family more content, to turn grim endings into happy ones. Fun Home (at London’s Young Vic), the engrossingly imaginative musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, writes, draws and redraws the author’s past. Early on, it announces its two defining plot questions: how did Alison come out? Why did her father kill … [Read more...]