Some props have extended stage careers. Swords debut shiny and new in Romeo and Juliet and keep clattering away until they’re finally battered to bits in Coriolanus. Tankards roll sturdily from Henry IV to A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Others? One night and you’re over. That’s showbiz, baby. In Berberian Sound Studio at London's Donmar, the celery and carrot, the cabbage and water melons, all … [Read more...]
Propwatch: the blender in Julie
The talk around us was all about the dishwashers. ‘Look, there’s two of them,’ murmured the woman in front of us. ‘Three dishwashers,’ gasped a guy in the row behind. By the end, I counted four: it turns out there were seven. What else does the kitchen in Julie, Polly Stenham’s reboot of Strindberg, contain? An ostentatiously long table/worktop. A couple of cupboards fitted alongside the … [Read more...]
The hole story
Georg Büchner died in 1837 with his masterpiece unfinished – a masterpiece because it’s unfinished, perhaps. The text of Woyzeck is incomplete, the scenes disordered. Based on a real-life murder, it gives naturalism a swerve, and the holes and fractures have lured many subsequent theatre artists. (The one that sticks with me is Robert Wilson’s collaboration with Tom Waits: stylised, … [Read more...]