As You Like It

A Northern Broadsides production. In the round, which means that some scenes are mildly obscured. Done at quite a lick with some amusing scenes (the sheep, the sheep!), with Rosalind’s performance giving it dynamism. It went all out on being inclusive and ungendered. Gender was portrayed as something that you wear as lightly as you wear your clothes: coat stands for the trees in the forest and clothes hanging from the ceiling. A play about outcasts, cross-dressing and mirror opposites can take that kind of treatment. Jaques was slightly incomprehensible to me, which was a pity.

Yeah, it was OK.

Leopoldstadt

Another theatre-in-cinema production, this time of Tom Stoppard’s latest (last?) play. It’s about a Viennese Jewish family from 1899 to 1955. No surprises about what happens. No real drama either: it’s a static, almost didactic play that reminded me of George Bernard Shaw. But always interesting and – of course – very moving.

There were long passages that were more like exposition, but they were put in context by other scenes. So, for example, Hermann’s confident assertion in 1899 that the empire was liberalising and Jews could be accepted everywhere – optimistic, but since he believed in progress he had grounds to hold that view – shrivelled and died in the face of his wife’s lover.

A Little Night Music

So wonderful to see a live performance again! This was an Opera North production in the Leeds Playhouse. It could have been half as good and I would still have been delighted with it.

My first visit to Leeds since February 2020; I walked into the Queen’s Hotel, the lower half of my face obscured by my mask, and the doorman welcomed me back. I was ridiculously pleased.

• Madame Armfeldt – Dame Josephine Barstow
• Desiree Armfeldt – Stephanie Corley
• Frederik Egerman – Quirijn de Lang

The singers were miked up, which was a surprise – they generally have no difficulty in reaching the back of the gallery unaided – until I realised that they were projecting as little as possible.

Uncle Vanya

Directed by Ian Rickson with Richard Armitage and Toby Jones

A stage-on-screen production which was very good. It could have been unbearably depressing (and I, for one, didn’t find Sonya’s final speech particularly comforting: we may suffer here, but God will smile on us in the end) were it not for the wit of the script and the energy of the actors. Astrov’s worn-out idealism, Sonya’s will to goodness and Vanya’s sense of a wasted life (at 47! I’d kill to be 47 again!) were heart-breaking. How I disliked the life-sucking professor and admired the tree-planting doctor. And isolated at the back of beyond where life is trammelled and suspended – how very relevant.