Partly the trip was worth it because not only was Chichester rather beautiful but the tickets were much more affordable than I find the Theatre Royal Haymarket and given that I had nabbed one of the front row corner seats, I had a marvellous bargain of a view. In fact parts felt like a wonderfully private and wonderfully subtle personal performance – especially from Jamie Parker who was frequently perched on the stage in front of me. Which might explain why I’m one of the few people in my immediate friendship group who came away more impressed with him than with Samuel Barnett – though given how fantastic both were, it seems a little churlish to be picking favourites. Especially as the real magic lay in their interaction. Both in the writing and in the performances, the actors and the characters deep friendship sparkled. I loved the word games, the complimentary counterpoint of Parker’s pessimistic paranoia with Barnett’s playful hopefulness and I loved the physicality both brought to the roles (I was possibly overly enamoured with the way both put on their rain poncho’s as a very silly example).
It’s the enjoyable inclusiveness of this friendship that has led to me booking a return trip (despite the aforementioned terrifying prices) – though also this was one of the few occasions where I felt that I had probably missed out by not being familiar with the play (or Stoppard in general as bizarrely this is the first of his plays I’ve seen). It felt very clever and very dense to me and I wish I had been more immersed in the story and the world so I could have done more than simply beginning to pick apart all the ideas and the philosophy and the meta. I loved though that this cleverness in the production was also shot through with a wonderful vein of silliness – creating a beautiful marriage between the two sides of the play. This silliness was especially present with the Players scenes and I thought Chris Andrew Mellon did an excellent job stepping into Tim Curry’s shoes.
The set had a lovely elegant beauty, both in the slightly disorientating sense of inside and outside and in the beautiful arches that dominated Elsinore castle (despite the fact that because of the angle of my seat, I was occasionally able to see the backstage staff). I found myself almost longing to see the full Hamlet we were capturing short glimpses of, especially as I was rather taken with Jack Hawkins’s swashbuckling Dane.
A great introduction to Stoppard made wonderful by the performances and chemistry of Parker and Barnett – I can’t wait to see it again in August.
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