The Sydney Theatre Company’s contribution to this years’ Sydney Festival is Benedict Andrews’s epic production of William Shakespeare’s The War Of The Roses, played in two parts, in an adaptation prepared by Andrews and Tom Wright, Associate Director of the Company.
Presented as four distinct acts and performed in two separate parts, (that can be seen in one long sitting or over two consecutive nights), War Of The Roses spans almost 100 turbulent years of English history by condensing eight of Shakespeare’s interrelated history plays. The play charts the course of English royal history from the melancholy of Richard 11 to the catastrophe of Richard 111.
Benedict Andrews helms a typically confronting and distinctive production. Interestingly, most of the roles of the kings are played, and played with tenacity, by actresses. The production featured a large, bare, stage, in Andrews words, ‘the ‘bare stage being the metaphoric garden where history is played out’.
The production was heavily atmospheric and symbolic with both parts of the show starting with showers of flecks raining down from the roof of the stage to adorn the hair and clothes of the tolerant cast, – in Part 1 flecks that looked like golden leaves, and in Part 2, snow-like flecks that appeared to turn dark on landing.
The play was something of a killing field’s experience, as the body count steadily rose. The killings were carried out in a highly stylized fashion, with morbid actors carrying around small flasks of red fluid as they stalked their prey, and then spraying their victims with it, signifying the killing.
The rewards of this production lay mainly with the actors who worked together well in a strong ensemble. Stand outs were:-Cate Blanchett who was compelling as the melancholic King Richard 11 who saw his power and wealth gradually slip away from him, Robert Menzies as Henry Bolingbroke, Marte Dusseldorp was striking as Margaret, and most of all, Pamela Rabe who was extraordinary in an outstanding, full blooded performance, in Act Part 2, as ‘that dog’ King Richard 111.
My main reservation lay with Andrews taking excessive liberties, especially in a scene depicting oral sex between inebriated men – that is nowhere to be seen in the Bard’s text.
Grim..very grim. ‘The War Of The Roses’ was unremittingly dark, confronting theatre. The body count just kept on climbing up over the seven hours plus of theatre. It gave credence to the Bards maxim, ‘uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’, surely a tainted chalice if ever there was one. Some who brave it may find it a challenge to last the distance.
The War Of The Roses is playing the Sydney Theatre at Walsh Bay until 14th February. Bookings Sydney Theatre Company on 92501777 or sydneyfestival.org.au