:: Love and a Bit With A Dog ::

So consumed was I yesterday to extol the virtues of meteorological and teutonic phenomena that I omitted to recount what I did on Saturday. After 7 days without a respite from rehearsals, I decided to go out with a few friends - to the theatre. Madness! you cry, but some people I know from the South London Theatre have set up a professional theatre company, Melmoth, and we were eager to attend their inaugural production at the Greenwich Playhouse (above a pub next to the station, in case you were wondering). Two Gentlemen Of Verona is a Shakepeare play I don't know at all, so I was looking forward to this, especially after seeing the flyer:

I should put my cards on the table at this point: I love Shakespeare, but am wary of anything being overly traditional (stockinged proclamation) or gratuitously innovative (bondage and body fluids). As the most celebrated author in English, I think Shakespeare deserves respect for his astonishing language, but the audience deserves a helping hand with the plot. So the best of all possible worlds for me is one in which the text is interpreted, evoked and presented largely intact, and the vagaries of the production (however "innovative") are integral to the action as it takes place. This allows scope for the severely traditional, the wildly offbeat and everything in between, but not productions where the text is compromised.

Enough ranting. This is a superb production, difficult to fault - from the dazzling costumes to the zippy delivery. Any reservations I'd had about the danger of moulding the play to a gay agenda were unfounded. Proteus and Valentine were indeed cast as a pair of male lovers, but this appeared to place no stress on Shakespeare's lines. I've rarely seen such an enjoyable, accomplished piece of theatre. It would be impossible to single out any individual performance in such a fine ensemble cast, but the gaggle of gay bandits make me rock with laughter. I can't imagine that many productions could have wrung so much from the line "We camp here almost every night."

There was just one problem. I thought the audience was disappointingly small - especially for a Saturday night. Therefore, dear reader, I implore you to go along and see it - you have until 16th May. It's a pleasure to be able to recommend a play which is still running by the time I come to review it. I'm planning to push aside some of my packed schedule to see it again, so I might even see you there. Go to the theatre website and book your tickets now!