Women Beware Women, National Theatre, 17th May

At the centre of Gary Taylor's lecture on this play, previously reviewed here, was the hope that Middleton's work was finally getting the recognition it deserves. Certainly, on the great stage of the National's Olivier theatre, under a glittering chandelier, it looks like a hope that it justified. The best thing about the National is the pool of talent that it can draw on, and the cast for Women Beware Women is as sumptuous as the set.
Harriet Walter as Livia is marvellous - stylish, scheming, and relentlessly practical about the ways women can wield power. She is very funny when yearning for her young lover (a rather tentative performance from Samuel Barnett), and charmingly cynical in the chess scene that T.S. Eliot was such a fan of. Raymond Coulthard, as Hippolito, is a surprise - I'd only encountered him previously in the execrable Hotel Babylon, and he turns in a strong, sympathetic performance in which his love for niece Isabella is very believable. Vanessa Kirby (said niece) will need more experience before she can truly shine; she struggles to project to the vast space, and her voice often sounds strangled.
The design is a little tired - more Fellini - but during the murderous final masque hints of Early Modern style manifest in masks and some smartly tailored jackets, which is a nice touch to a scene that makes brilliant use of the Olivier's revolve. The montage effect is filmic and very slick, a nice handling of a scene that racks up corpses fast enough to be funny if done wrong. Where this performance really wins is in walking an impeccable line through Middleton's extremes - the tragedy is at times painful to watch, but the (often filthy) one-liners get more laughs than I've heard Shakespeare's comedies get at the National. At times it's a little stylised, where plainness would suit best, but there's really barely a foot put wrong.
As the man says, it's 'as if the plague of sin had been agreed to meet here together'. Sin looks pretty sexy from where I'm sitting.

Middleton: Renaissance Man, Gary Taylor, National Theatre, Monday 10th May

Gary Taylor is a bit of a rock star to me. He's largely responsible for the revival of Middleton's reputation, and shared responsibility with John Lavagnino for producing The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, as fine a piece of scholarship as you are ever likely to stub your toe on. But, see, Middleton's cool. He's the Rolling Stones to Shakespeare's Beatles. So when Gary Taylor rocks up on stage, with his long hair and his black painted fingernails (on later inspection, actually a rather fetching metallic blue), it's looking like a good evening to me. Under the glittering chandeliers of the Felliniesque set for Women Beware Women, his lecture-lite (geared towards the London theatre crowd, and pretty accessible) concentrated on how Middleton writes women. Taylor points out that while some of Middleton's work is undoubtedly misogynist, in Women Beware Women the ladies always have more lines than their lovers, something otherwise unknown in Early Modern drama. They're not always nice to other women. They can like sex with men a lot or reject it utterly, buy sex for money or refuse to sell it. They're rarely idealised - I'm not sure Middleton ever idealised a single character. What's interesting is that the first revival of Women Beware Women was at the Arts Theatre, a private members club that could get round the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain's office. Thirty-nine year old widows who enjoy themselves with younger men of relatively lowly status apparently used to need a lot of censoring. Taylor is, as one would expect, a practiced and compelling speaker, particularly when in defence of Middleton's talents. And he's right. Middleton excelled in as many forms as Shakespeare - comedy and tragedy alike. The most popular play that ever played at what is now called 'Shakespeare's Globe' was actually one of Middleton's. I think they should rename it, personally...