Abstract
This latest addition to The Arden Shakespeare series Shakespeare in the Theatre provides a detailed and immensely readable account of one of the most innovative and well-respected contemporary theatre companies. Peter Kirwan’s acknowledged love of Cheek by Jowl, allied to his assiduous research and the access offered by the company, combine to produce a detailed examination of their working practices in English, Russian, and French, providing a scholarly assessment of the impact of the company’s work since its foundation in 1981.
Initially, Kirwan traces the development of the company under joint artistic directors, Nick Ormerod and Declan Donnellan, since its inception, together with an analysis of their ethos of freeing the actor through a rehearsal process concerned more with ‘potential rather than definition’ (2). The introduction examines the principles that inform Cheek by Jowl’s work as a touring company performing across continents in English, French, and Russian, and highlights the ways in which later chapters will analyse how such principles as ‘colour-blind casting, productions featuring an all-male company, using actors as musicians [and] the distinctive practice of overlapping scenes’ have influenced contemporary British theatre practices (3). His examination of the company’s experimental work with text, light and playing spaces is also revelatory. Subsequent chapters present detailed case studies of specifically paired productions of both Shakespearean and lesser explored plays.
The first of these pairings comprises two contrasting productions, both presented in Roscommon, an area of rural Ireland with which Donnellan was closely connected throughout his youth. The first of these was Lady Betty, the only piece written by Donnellan for the company, which was staged in 1989, and, over twenty-five years later, their most recent English-speaking production, A Winter’s Tale (2016–2017). Allowed full access to the rehearsal process for the Shakespeare production, Kirwan takes the opportunity to record and analyse the company’s detailed approach to a canonical text, the actor-led working through of specific scenes, and the rationale behind textual excisions and interpolations. He also highlights the ways in which the company’s inherent physicality in performance is reflective of their rehearsal process. In contrast, his work on Lady Betty examines Donnellan’s text itself and how the narrative, based on a local legend concerning a Roscommon hangwoman, embodies much of the company’s ethos and theatrical practice, including those principles described by Kirwan in his Introduction.
The next chapter examines the company’s productions of The Duchess of Malfi (1995–1996) and Macbeth (2009–2011). Here, Kirwan’s emphasis is on the ways in which ‘the “spare, disciplined” house style of Cheek by Jowl is far from being “empty space”; rather this space energizes the proxemics of the stage that physicalize what is at stake’ (71). In order to demonstrate such an approach, he initially describes in detail the movement of the Macbeths during a single performance of part of one short scene (1.5.54–73) in which tonal and emotional shifts in the couple’s relationship are reflected in the actors’ bodies as they re-negotiate their bond. As his Introduction states, ‘the recurrence of Anastasia Hille as the Duchess and Lady Macbeth allows for direct comparison of Cheek by Jowl’s work with one actor fourteen years apart’ (14). The chapter also engages with the ways that, in both productions, the acting space, lighting design, and the physicality of the actors combine to create a deep sense of the isolation of the human characters at the centre of each play.
Chapter 3 switches from the company’s approach to two canonical tragedies, to the ways in which what Kirwan describes as a ‘skewed perception’ of Cheek by Jowl as an all-male company has been influenced by their productions of two comedies, As You Like It (1991–1995) and their long-running Russian language Twelfth Night, which began life in 2003 and has recently been revived with a new cast. As with the two tragedies, there is once again a focus on the centrality of the actors’ bodies and how these are used to create a world in which the ‘love relationships are unexceptional’ (74). Rather than examine the productions through the lens of queer theory, Kirwan instead concentrates on the ways in which the actors inhabit their roles and create a specifically gendered identity, whether as a man playing a woman or a man ‘playing at’ being a man. A detailed examination of Twelfth Night, in particular, becomes an exploration of how masculinity and maleness are as much a personal and societal construct as femininity and the female. Kirwan concludes the chapter with an account of the way in which Adrian Lester (the first actor of colour to take the traditionally white lead role of Rosalind) presented the epilogue, drawing ‘attention to the conditionality of the performed body – and the possibilities and limitations inherent in gendered identity’ (99).
With the pairing of Cymbeline (2007) and The Tempest (2011–), Kirwan addresses in more detail what he describes as the company’s ‘core stylistic conceits […] the appearance of characters as they are spoken about and the overlapping scene transition’ (101). This entails an expansion on what is described in Chapter 1: Donnellan’s directorial methods and his approach to the text. A close analysis of the ‘tableau-freeze’ reveals how it ‘opens up fresh interpretive possibilities as the actor plays against a visualization of what their character is imagining’ and offers specific examples from both Cheek by Jowl’s Othello and the company’s English Cymbeline. Such a ‘juxtaposition of spoken words and visual images’ reflects the filmic convention of the narrative voice-over and leads, Kirwan argues, to critics referring to the company’s productions in filmic terms. The chapter also examines Cheek by Jowl’s approach to cutting/editing a text, incorporating a detailed comparison of the Arden text and the performance script for Cymbeline alongside a description of how specific scenes were performed. A similarly detailed account of the staging of the Russian company’s The Tempest also illustrates how the use of ‘projected and frozen subjects serve to emphasize the same separation that had characterized Cymbeline’ (119).
Chapter 5 moves away from the company’s Shakespearean oeuvre to concentrate on their approach to the interaction between set design and the actors’ bodies when staging two plays with Shakespearean roots, John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (2011–2014) and Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (2013–2015). Kirwan explains that the company does not work from a traditional model but, instead, allows a production’s look to ‘emerge during rehearsals’ (129), examining the impact of designer Nick Ormerod’s approach which ‘privileges space and fluidity over visuals’ (130). The sparseness of the resultant design not only allows for Cheek by Jowl’s trademark overlapping transitions from scene to scene but also helps facilitate their touring commitments. This close examination of these two plays, each of which demands a very specific mise-en-scène, allows an exploration of the interaction between the sets and the bodies of the actors, and the weight of meaning produced.
The final chapter, entitled ‘Empathy and Loneliness’, provides Kirwan with the opportunity to bring together the key elements of the company’s work previously highlighted. He begins with Donnellan’s definition of empathy as ‘understanding we have no idea what the other person is feeling’ and his belief that ‘change – and theatre – come from the understanding that other people are different from us’ (156). Bearing this perspective in mind, Kirwan examines the director’s approach to the sadness he believes is inherent in Much Ado about Nothing and that, consequently, the company’s 1998 production was informed by Donnellan’s realisation that ‘the more you look at it the more you realize that there is something very unpleasant in the play’ (161). Kirwan’s analysis of that production is placed alongside his reaction to their Russian language Measure for Measure. Neither production offers an unambiguously happy ending, concluding instead that joy is an emotion that must be earned and from which some characters will remain excluded.
Rather than offer an exhaustive account of Cheek by Jowl’s every production, Kirwan has selected both canonical and non-canonical works that he feels most clearly demonstrate the company’s approach to text and performance. His detailed analysis will be of immense value to all readers interested in the company itself, what is required in the making of great theatre and those who wish to learn more of what he describes as ‘the spirit of Cheek by Jowl’ which is summarised as ‘freedom; freedom for the actor, freedom for the tour, freedom for the art’ (188).