Despite the witterings of the archbishop of Canterbury and his left-leaning clergy, God is not a socialist, and I can prove it. Take acting talent. It is God-given, but did He dish it out in nice, equal shares? He did not! I, myself, have been blessed with a modicum of ability. My Falstaff was looked upon kindly by, admittedly, a tiny, not to say, miniscule audience; and my Lucio from Measure for Measure was, well, wonderful wasn’t the word, according to friends and family. But just as my delusions of grandeur reach bursting point, I go off to see Simon Russell Beale - and I am dashed – again!
That man has a surfeit of talent, it oozes from every pore. When he empties his pockets at night, he puts talent on his bedside table! The swine, why couldn’t he share some of it with me? When he was younger he was, shall we say, on the plump side, and yet the RSC gave him the role of Ariel! How I laughed. Beale playing a sprite, a spirit! I could hardly wait; this budding Billy Bunter, dashing hither and thither, lighter than air itself. Beale played it dressed in a sort of Mao suit, and moved with the stately precision of a rather grand butler who considered himself superior to the rather nouveau riche master, and with a pent-up hatred of Prospero, who had entrapped him for so long, which culminated in a long, long pause after he has been granted his liberty, followed by a full-on spit in the face of his master. It was an electrifying moment, and I was ashamed that I had never even considered that the relationship between Prospero and Ariel was one of hatred from slave to slave-master.
I have seen Mr. Beale several times since and his talent, damn him, grows; but alas, so to does his tum! This week I went to see his Macbeth, and I regret to say that his tum let him down. The Victorian critic, A. C. Bradley, has been severely beaten up by the modernist, post-modernist, and for all I know, the ‘prequel-sequel-modernist’ critics, but I reckon he’s right on the button. It is essential that at the end of any production of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the audience feels a sense of pity for the fallen hero, a sense of what might have been, of great achievements just missed because of malign fate or whatever. Macbeth has little chance to demonstrate his nobler side, not least because most of it is fed to the audience from hearsay sources, such as the Captain, in act I, scene 1, who tells of Macbeth’s huge courage on the battlefield. For that message to be re-enforced, the audience expects to see a warrior-like figure, and I’m afraid to report that in this instance, Mr. Beale’s figure resembled the ‘before’ picture in a weight-watchers advert.
He did get away with breaking the golden rule of theatre, that you can’t play Hamlet if you’re fat and forty. In fact he did much, much more than just get away with it, it was a performance that defined the role. He played the only Hamlet I have ever seen who I liked and cared for as a person, and I felt a real sense of loss when the inevitable tragic ending occurred. Perhaps the Macbeth was ill-judged, but please do not think that it was a waste of time. Once his murderous ambition was fired up, Mr. Beale showed us all how the acid of evil can sizzle its way through a psyche. Some critics have complained that the production was taken too slowly. Not for me, it wasn’t. It was one of the few recent Shakespeare productions where I felt that the players, some of them quite young, understood the thoughts that lay behind the words they were delivering. Some actors will take a pause out of self-indulgence. Mr. Beale is too good for that sort of shabbiness. During his pauses, you can almost see the brain and the intelligence ticking over.
Now, I think, is the time for his Falstaff, but I shall hesitate to see it; too, too shame-making.
Yep, my acting ability is about as good as my Typepad ability - could do better, but probably won't!
Posted by: David Duff | Friday, 18 February 2005 at 15:52