Fiennes Fans Find Furher Felicities







By Alastair Macaulay
Financial Times
The Arts: Theatre
April 14, 2000





I'll say one thing for Ralph Fiennes even before you see him on stage: he causes traffic congestion all over north London. As in 1995 with "Hamlet at the Hackney Empire", now in 2000 with "Shoreditch Shakespeare" - a four-month season of Richard II and Coriolanus - the streets of Hackney, Highbury, Islington, and Shoreditch are jammed with cars taking wrong turnings for Fiennes.


And I love the central fact: R. Fiennes, big film star, keeps returning to the London stage, not in flattering vanity parts but in the most taxing roles - and in large, challenging, venues seldom associated with Shakespeare and little known to West End theatregoers. Fiennes will carry this whole season, all performances. Fans will discover the further beauties of his voice and posture - and also his interest in malign, weak, conflicted traits of character. And will also discover, of course, great plays and other illustrious co-actors.


This project - conceived by the Almeida Theatre and its artistic directors, Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid - is on a grand and serious scale, and should be compared not with other recent productions of Richard II and Coriolanus in smaller theatres but with the recent efforts by both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre to make Shakespeare once again project powerfully in large auditoria.


And yet, the Shoreditch Shakespeare project feels essentially old-fashioned, pretty, fruity minor-league. If only all the cast were like Barbara Jefford! She has only to begin her first line and you recognise the presence of superlative acting: acting that beams out effortlessly while vividly communicating words and character, situation. But some of the other older actors rant and roar in the worst manner - even Oliver Ford Davies, who does splendidly in later scenes. And some of the younger ones - even, at times, Linus Roache as an unusually lightweight, tentative Bolingbroke - chant. For whom are these actors speaking? The mind wanders.


Paul Brown has designed an eloquent set worthy of Pina Bausch: a whole stage of green lawn studded with weeds and a grand brick wall split from top to bottom. Looks sumptuous; and the production, rendered atmospheric by (an excess of) mock-medieval music by Jonathan Dove, sounds handsome - until you try to pay attention to the word-by-word essence of the play.


And Fiennes? He never rants or roars, and almost never chants. He stints nothing in showing the initial effete malice of Richard; he makes numerous intelligent points with individual words or lines; he is in charge of every scene. Impossible not to admire him. But, since he does seem to be trying for some Great Actor prize, it has to be said that greatness eludes him. He lacks simplicity and directness. His characterisation seems shrewd, telling, but more calculated than fully lived. And the English language on his voice feels like a cultivated rare orchid, unfit for everyday usage.


'Richard II', Gainsborough Studios, London N1




 

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