Author Archive for LizPlumpton

The Changeling gets technical

Published
by
LizPlumpton
 on April 29, 2010
 in Uncategorized
. Closed
'Where blood and beauty first unlawfully fir'd their devotion and quench'd the right one.'

'Where blood and beauty first unlawfully fir'd their devotion and quench'd the right one.'

The cast and crew of The Changeling are working hard in the run-up to opening on Saturday 8th May. This is the time when all the technical details start to be put in place and it all starts to come together. The costumes are looking A-M-A-Z-I-N-G thanks to costume designer Alan Marshal and his dedicated team of makers. The costume team have been working all hours to realise Alan’s designs and from the fittings I’ve seen so far, we are in for a real costume treat! Meanwhile lighting and sound are putting the finishing touches to their plots, aiming to create a dark, visceral and stylised experience for the audience. It’s all looking and sounding great so be sure to book your ticket.

Helen Mirren on Jacobean tragedy and ‘The Changeling’

Published
by
LizPlumpton
 on March 4, 2010
 in Uncategorized
. Closed

Helen Mirren as Beatrice-Joanna

In an interview in 2007, specially recorded to accompany the release of a DVD compliation of some of her best work at the BBC, Helen Mirren, who played Beatrice-Joanna in a 1974 BBC production of ‘The Changeling’, had this to say about the role and the genre;
“I adore Jacobean tragedy. I have a great affinity for it. I’ve done three altogether; The Duchess of Malfi which I did later, The Changeling and The Revenger’s Tragedy which was my first big role in the theatre. And I still love it and I’d jump at the chance to do another.
  I think it appeals to my romantic nature; to my gothic nature. You know, I think if I was a young girl nowI’d be a goth because I love that sort of dark, but passionate, but emotional, romantic…it just, it appeals to me.
  I think another reason I love Jacobean drama is the women’s roles are fabulous. They’re great; they’re sexy, they’re extreme, they’re incredibly evil and they’re full of dichotomies and complexity and Beatrice-Joanna is an absolute case in point.
  I’d love to do a modern day version of The Changeling because I think it’s a fascinating story of someone who is so repulsed, utterly repulsed by someone but actually finishes up completely obsessed by them. I mean he’s ugly; he’s physically ugly. He’s also lower class, he’s the servant – so she can’t see him even as a human being but he sees himself very much as a human being and he is absolutely obsessed by her. There’s a wonderful story about class.”

(Helen Mirren Remembers, 2007, BBC DVD)

Nothing changes…

Published
by
LizPlumpton
 on February 5, 2010
 in Uncategorized
. Closed

 

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito
 
Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

‘…the progress of Desire from its first conception is of this kind…it seeks hiding places and keeps itself secret…until throwing off all restraints of shame and fear…it either assumes the mask of some virtue, or sets infamy itself at defiance.’ (Francis Bacon, De Dignitate et Augentis Scientarium, 1623)

The Changeling (8th – 15th May, Crescent Studio) is a play for anyone who, watching the news last year, looked at Amanda Knox being led away in handcuffs and wondered how pretty 22 year old exchange student from Seattle, USA ended up being convicted of the murder and sexual assault of another young woman.

We’ll probably never know exactly what passed between Knox, her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Meredith Kercher. The facts are that Kercher was found dead; she had suffered a crushed windpipe, her throat had been slashed, she had 43 bruises, scratches and knife wounds on her body and she had been sexually assaulted. Amanda Knox, a previously unremarkable, middle-class young woman, is now serving a 26 year sentence in an Italian prison. Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted of murder and sexual assault and jailed for 25 years.

Middleton and Rowley’s play deals with what happens when the animal instincts that lie somewhere within us all are unleashed. It’s a dark, violent and bloody Jacobean tragedy with plenty to say to a modern audience about the fragile line between passion and madness.

The main character, Beatrice, lets her passion for a man she can’t have override her reason. She enters into a sinister pact with a Deflores, a servant who has secretly lusted after her for years. When Deflores changes the terms of their agreement after murder has been done, she agrees to quench his desire for her, rather than risk revealing what they have done. More deceit becomes the only way to cover up their crimes as they spiral into depravity and despair. Beatrice is the ‘changeling’ of the title; changing almost beyond recognition from the beautiful, ordinary young noblewoman at the start of the play.

Jacobeans believed that humans were set apart from animals and plants by their possession of a ‘rational soul’. It was the rational soul that ruled over the animal in Man, elevating people above beasts. If Man’s appetites refused to be controlled by the rational soul, they believed that the animal in Man became dominant, resulting in madness. Madness in Jacobean plays is not only seen as a state of sin, but is frequently represented by the transformation of humans to the state of animals. It is almost as though the animal in man resents being tethered by reason and rationality, so much so that when let loose, it wilfully wreaks havoc.

Francis Bacon, a prominent Jacobean thinker, used the image of ‘the tiger in the chariot’ to describe this phenomenon; ‘Tigers likewise are kept in the stables of the passions, and at times yoked to their chariot; for when passion ceases to go on foot and comes to ride in its chariot, as in celebration of its victory and triumph over reason, then is it cruel, savage, and pitiless towards all that withstand or oppose it.’ (De Dignitate et Augentis Scientarium, 1623).

The Changeling is a play about what happens if we let our basest desires ride roughshod over our reason and humanity. A glance at some of the more salacious stories in the news, nearly 400 years after the play was first performed, suggests that the plot is as relevant today as it was in Jacobean times.

A tiger

Musings on ‘Of Mice and Men’

Published
by
LizPlumpton
 on December 20, 2008
 in 2009 and Of Mice and Men
. 2 Comments

‘The future is called “perhaps” which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.’ (Tennessee Williams)

Of Mice and Men is set in America during the economically depressed 1930s. It was a time of uncertainty about finance and investments, of instability in the employment market and of considerable hardship for many ordinary people (sound familiar yet?). The itinerant farm workers that Steinbeck writes about were forced to leave their homes and move from job to job and place to place in search of their ‘fifty bucks at the end of the month’.

As the Crescent prepares to mount a production of Of Mice and Men at a time of ever-deepening gloom about the economy, I’m wondering whether we are any more or less scared of our modern-day “perhapses” and whether we are any better equipped than Steinbeck’s characters to cope with them.

Many of the characters in the play have dreams for their futures; from movie stardom to just having a small farm of their own where nobody is able to ‘can’ them; in other words control of their own destiny. What would our attitude be to their dreams today? At work it seems that I am being asked to set targets/goals for myself or others on an almost daily basis. Our target-driven society would have been a mystery to Steinbeck’s characters – ‘What’s his average grain-bags-per-hour bucking rate?’ doesn’t quite ring true!

A modern-day ‘life coach’ might advise the characters to visualise themselves succeeding and achieving their dreams. Or perhaps they ought to set themselves a series of SMART targets to help them gradually move towards the future that they want? Spending time imagining or ‘visualising’ their dreams doesn’t seem to do the characters in OMAM much good. Indeed it only increases the pathos when their dreams are shattered one by one with varying degrees of brutality. The most content characters in the story (Slim, Whit, Carlson) are arguably those don’t aspire for more than what they’ve got.

Perhaps it is not the future itself that is scary but the act of daring to have a concrete dream for it. Wanting something (however simple) so badly can make you vulnerable to the pain of disappointment, as John Steinbeck’s choice of title suggests. The line is from Robert Burns’ poem To A Mouse, On Turning Up Her Nest With A Plough;

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men

Gang aft agley, (Often go awry)

An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

For promis’d joy!”

So is it best to settle for your lot in life and take the future as it finds you, rather than try to shape it? Not a terribly motivating message to take from a story that I love dearly. I read an interview with Sigourney Weaver recently where she said “You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘vulnerable’ until you have children.” Perhaps our dreams for our futures, like those of George, Lennie et al, are a little like children. We nurture our dreams and worry about them not working out. But ultimately, fear of losing them (dreams or children!) doesn’t usually stop us having them in the first place. We share the biological urge to reproduce with mice but perhaps it is the desire to dream that makes us men.

George and Lennie: A Love Story

Published
by
LizPlumpton
 on December 4, 2008
 in 2009 and Of Mice and Men
. 5 Comments

I realised the true power of ‘Of Mice and Men’ the first time I taught the novel to a (usually) disinterested class of Year 11 students. I got my first hint that something was up when the previously monosyllabic, ‘tough guy’ of the class arrived on time (!) for my lesson, took his coat off without being asked, sat down and  asked, with affected nonchalance, ‘We reading that book again today Miss?’. Kids began to initiate discussions about the story and ask interesting questions. It was a revelation. Then there was the long silence that settled over the group after we had read the section where George shoots Lennie, as several streetwise 15 year olds discreetly wiped away a tear.

It’s a special story. It’s also a pretty simple one and at its heart is the relationship between George and Lennie. It’s a love story; not in any sexual sense but in the sense that love is the only real explanation for their actions in the story.

‘If we had any ketchup you could have it. And if I had a hundred bucks I’d buy you a bunch of flowers.’ (George)

George would dearly like to create a home for Lennie where he could be safe and where George wouldn’t constantly be watching out for him. There is genuine affection and companionship between them and that provides an antidote to the loneliness that afflicts so many of the other characters in the play. There are constant references to how unusual it is for two guys to travel around together for work. Their unconventional friendship provokes a variety of responses from the other characters; suspicion (Curley and the Boss), envy (Crooks and to an extent Candy), acceptance (Slim) and indifference (Carlson and Whit).

There are clear parallels between Lennie and George and Candy and his ‘ole dog’. Nobody else can really understand what is ‘in’ these two relationships for Candy or George. Rather than familiarity breeding contempt, in both cases it is the longevity of the relationships and the being ‘used to’ the smelly old dog or the simple giant, that breeds deep affection and a desire to protect.

‘I kinda got used to him and then I couldn’t get rid of being used to him’ (George) ‘I had him from a pup…I wouldn’t want him to suffer.’ (Candy, as Carlson is trying to persuade him to shoot his dog)

Just as Candy loses his only real companion, his dog, George loses Lennie when he must kill him to protect him from a worse fate at the hands of a lynch mob. Ultimately, George cannot keep Lennie safe from himself.

Now that the show is cast (including the dog!), the actors and I are are beginning to explore these relationships. Now matter how many times I hear, read or watch this story, it never fails to move me. I think what makes it so brilliant (and so beloved of adolescents in English classrooms everywhere) is that you can strip away the context of the American Dream and the Great Depression and all that ‘stuff’ and there is just a cracking human interest story underneath.

Of Mice and Men and American Dreams

Published
by
LizPlumpton
 on November 16, 2008
 in Of Mice and Men
. Closed

I’ve never been to America, by which I mean the USA, but, perhaps like many of us, I feel that I have a greater sense of that country from literature, film, television and media, than some foreign countries that I have visited. Whether that is a true sense is hard to say but what I can say is that despite not always being terribly enamoured of some of the USA’s political and global activities, I am almost endlessly fascinated by great American literature.

Many of my favourite books and plays are deeply rooted in the American psyche; from classics such as ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, ‘Death of a Salesman’, ‘To Kill and Mockingbird’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’ which I am directing for the Crescent; to more modern work such as the novels of Toni Morrison and John Irving. I think you can trace thematic threads through all these works and many more. I will post more about these themes as my rehearsal process develops and deepens but here are a few starting points:

1. It’s a BIG country. I can’t imagine how big it is or what it feels like to travel for days across swathes of fields or desert without ever coming to an ocean. Is all that space liberating or oppressive in its own way? Many characters, such as Biff in Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’, and Lenny and George in ‘Of Mice and Men’, dream of owning their own little patch of all that space and living free off the ‘fat o’ the lan”. The possibilities seem endless and perhaps therein lies the problem; with all that choice and apparent freedom where is the urgency to commit and settle? It’s also a pretty lonely place for most of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’.

2. Technology and progress; moving forward. From motor cars to farm machinery, engines and machines are everywhere in American literature yet they often cause more harm than good. Candy in ‘Of Mice and Men’ has been disabled by a machine and motor vehicle accidents wreak havoc on the lives of John Irving’s characters in ‘The World According to Garp’ and ‘A Widow for One Year’.

3. ‘All men are born free but some are born more free than others’. Racial inequality and the legacy of slavery haunt many American classics. Crooks, the black stable buck, is marginalised on the ranch in ‘Of Mice and Men’ and is consequently embittered and disempowered – I will talk more about how I intend to explore this in my production another time. Racial prejudice leading to injustice is foregrounded in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and I draw a direct parallel between the actions of Sethe in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’, who kills her own daughter rather than have her taken back into slavery, and the actions of George at the end of ‘Of Mice and Men’. Lenny is not black but he is certainly ‘different’.

4. The American Dream. Hopeless or dashed dreams drive many of the great characters of American literature. Many of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’ have dreams; from Curley’s Wife who dreams of movie stardom – the apex of celebrity-obssessed American society even in the 1930s, to George and Lenny’s more modest but equally impossible dream of their own little farm.

As Langston Hughes wrote in his poem ‘A Dream Deferred’;

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

(Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967)

I think you can find the fate of most of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’ in that poem and each has its own particular tragedy.

Liz Plumpton