It’s 40 years since punk, and the film on which this is based. Johnny Rotten’s now advertising butter and Vivienne Westwood’s a Dame making posh frocks. Toyah Wilcox is the one link between the film and stage adaptation, and she’s been promoted to Queen Elizabeth I. They haven’t kept it in its period, it’s now. It’s as much of a mess as the film (Jarman’s view just 11 years later) but there is something compelling about the theatricality of Chris Goode’s adaptation and I wasn’t bored, but don’t expect an explanation.
It appears to link the two Elizabethan times. Elizabeth I, accompanied by her court astrologer John Dee and Shakespeare’s Ariel is peering in on the present Elizabethan time, populated by a cross-dressing ‘historian’, a lesbian pyromaniac, two brothers who are also lovers and spend most of the evening naked, a performance artist, an exploitative impresario, a budding rap singer and others. It sets out to shock, but ironically doesn’t shock as much today. There’s sex, violence and dancing, but ‘historian’ Amyl Nitrate’s monologues are some of the best bits.
They’ve put temporary (and much more uncomfortable) seating on top of the stalls and on both sides of the stage to create a more in-yer-face environment. Chloe Lamford’s design looks like she’s recycled some of her Royal Court Grimly Handsome work. An appropriately anarchic feel pervades Goode’s production and Toyah as Queen Bess gets to sing her hit I Wanna Be Free at the end. It’s a very brave cast, who seem to rather enjoy being right in the middle of the mess.
Intriguing, sometimes fascinating, occasionally riveting, intermittently funny, but overall I was an uninvolved onlooker / voyeur and rather indifferent to it, and at 2.5 hours, for too long and uncomfortable.
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