I did The Winter’s Tale at university, when I honestly didn’t know I was born. I just saw the first half up in Stratford and it was so human and upsetting and brilliant that I had to take a time out. I know it’s about to go to Bohemia, the play is 50% Othello 50% As You Like It. I left before it all got pastoral. But I needed to process it. Madeline Appiah absolutely destroyed me in the court scene as Hermione. I learnt and delivered Leontes aged twenty fuck-all to a summertime crowd at Whiteknights Open Air Theatre – (some scaff and masking we threw together on campus). In retrospect it was an intellectual exercise. I needed my training at Guildhall, I could speak with the confidence of an Harrovian but there was no real understanding or meaning there. I don’t know how anyone could forgive my Leontes. I don’t know how we are going to be able to forgive the one we have just seen, but I know this production is all heart. I will almost certainly come back when I’m more emotionally robust and watch the second half. It’s an extraordinary production. I had to take a time out. “Time” is seeded in throughout, a human narration presence. They use water in a shinto way – my sadness at Kumano Kodo is that the path you had to wade to through rice paddies has been health and safetied into a long bridge across water. The symbolism still works, but stronger by far if you have to wade there and back. There was wading aplenty in this production and it really works. It just broke me unexpectedly.
I’ve been up here teaching Shakespeare to Americans. It buttereth the parsnips. It was a good workshop, in the little Methodist church here. I was going to drive home but my evening meeting was cancelled so now I’m here in this little knocking shop hotel outside the city. I’ve time travelled to the nineteen seventies. Nobody is having sex next door though so it should be reasonably peaceful and then tomorrow I can go back home and pack, ahead of a few more nights in a field. Summer summer summer. I hope it doesn’t rain this weekend.
Back into town tomorrow briefly. I’m happy to be mobile at the mo. Beginning to feel human again and integrating with the world. Good to have the workshop as a focus. Dropped my phone though and it means I’m cheesegrating my finger when I swipe type. It never rains but it pours.
AlBarclay 