Shakespeare Snapshots, The Dell Gardens, review: the Bard stripped back to basics
No foyer to stroll through, no gift shop to browse, no seats to relax in, no cheek by jowl proximity. The cloud-capped tower, the gorgeous palace, the solemn temple (to nick a line from The Tempest) of Shakespeare worship that is the RSC’s Stratford base, alas, remains closed for the Covid-stricken time being but – hark ye – the actors are back.
The lush backyard garden area by the Avon quaintly known as The Dell is often the summertime spot for student, community and semi-professional productions. But for the rest of August, at select times from Friday to Sunday (1pm, 3pm), it is the province of the cast members of two postponed (and in peril) productions – The Comedy of Errors and The Winter’s Tale. They’re offering free-to-view (but please donate) "Shakespeare Snapshots”, a playlist of Bardic bits and bobs, shuffled anew each week.
I attended the first one partly – simply – to mark the moment; though there has been much outreach work behind the scenes, this was a symbolic act of re-emergence. What I didn’t expect was for something so relatively paltry to pack such a hefty punch.
It wasn’t just the sense of miraculous reacquaintance – like the end of a Shakespeare comedy of long separation. Even with nothing but grass below and sky above, audience on the ground, actors competing with traffic sounds, panting dogs, wailing kids, even the hand-drier of the Dell’s public convenience, it felt like a shared theatrical experience. More than that, for a spellbinding 45 minutes you were reminded that you can plonk those words in almost any space and – given decent sets of lungs and the skill-set to make every syllable count – they will draw you in.
Using the stump of an ancient oak tree as a gathering-point and stage – the ultimate ‘wooden O’ - the 10-strong contingent began, after a round of It Was a Lover and His Lass, with a shared rendition of All the World’s a Stage, with mimed cradling, actual satchel-swinging and sealed-eyed sadness helping mark the seven ages of man. Alice Blundell delighted as Rosalind, teasing Ben Caplan’s Orlando, but another speech from As You Like It, lent rueful defiance by Joseph Kloska, hit most sharply home – the exiled Duke’s embrace of the rough elements: “Sweet are the uses of adversity”; those lines can sound comically self-deluding but here they felt like vital consoling wisdom.
Greg Haiste made merry play with a face-mask during Much Ado’s post-masquerade rant as Benedick – “My very visor began to assume life and scold with her [Beatrice]”. Inevitably there were welcome dollops of The Comedy of Errors – Jonathan Broadbent making a lovely meal of Dromio’s protracted character-assassination of the large greasy kitchen wench. Amanda Hadingue conjured the wrangling world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Titania’s “These are the forgeries of jealousy” tirade. Seven sonnets were thrown into the freebie mix for good measure.
Then, after an elegiac dash of The Tempest and a rousing reprise of A Lover and His Lass off they all vanished, a sense of galvanised purpose in the air, leaving us aching for more, leaving us wanting the RSC back.
