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Sir Ian McKellen |
Bard’s ‘imbecility’? Sir Ian approves...
FREE weekly workshops are available for Islington teenagers wanting to get involved in the National Youth Theatre (NYT).
Actors including Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Derek Jacobi and “007” Daniel Craig started their careers with the NYT.
The sessions are on Friday evenings in the NYT building in Holloway Road where an event celebrating the “positive activities programme” is being held today (Friday).
The company is currently staging a rare production of William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline at the Arts Theatre in the West End.
Stage and screen actor Sir Ian McKellen, a former vice president of the NYT, was in the audience for Monday night’s performance.
He muttered with approval throughout the show before darting off into the night at the curtain.
The NYT has brought a eerie feel to the peculiar play about the bloody power struggle between Rome and the Celtic British King Cymbeline.
The “romance”, one of Shakespeare’s last plays, just before The Tempest, has been banished into critical exile since 18th century essayist Dr Samuel Johnson famously called time on its “unresisting imbecility”.
I sat down with a sense of impending doom – but the NYT always comes up with the goods. The dominatrix Queen (Catriona Cahill) and the faithful servant Pisanio (Ned Derrington) were the top performers on the night. They had that rare ability of making the complex plot and tricky language understandable to a contemporary audience. The NYT has made a script, seemingly locked in a dull historical past, come alive with modern-day relevance.
There is music, dancing and fantastic choreography. Director Brendan O’Hea, who started out as an actor with the NYT, has edited the script down to just 90 minutes and set designer Sam Wyer’s spooky stage brought a dark and menacing feel to the tale.
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