All-female cast plays shed new light on classics of the repertoire
Gender-blind casting or 'regendered' theatre – think Henry IV, Donmar, which opened on Friday 3rd Oct – is the latest trend for London theatre 2014, writes Alicia Queiro
Julius Caesar, Donmar Warehouse
When Maxine Peake Hamlet dates were announced at the Royal Exchange Theatre Londoners gnashed their teeth that Manchester audiences would have the pleasure of seeing the extraordinary Peake, an actress composed of purest Mithril, 'do' the Dane. Tickets sold like hot cakes (albeit followed by some mixed reviews for Peake). For while colour-blind casting has been popular with liberal directors for some time, it's now the turn of experiments in gender-blind casting to take centre stage.
And now it's the turn of Harriet Walter to take on the lead in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female production of Henry IV, which opened at the Donmar Warehouse on Friday 3rd October.
Granted, men have played women since theatre’s beginnings, and women (albeit more rarely) have been known to play men since they were allowed on stage in 1660. But in 2014, the all-female theatre company production has been getting critical acclaim, challenging audiences to question their own preconceptions.
The all-female theatre company (and variations thereof)
At Sadler’s Wells, audiences were treated to Dada Masilo’s gender-blind production of Swan Lake in June, while Maria Aberg’s re-gendered The White Devil (RSC 2014), with the manipulative Flamineo played by a woman, will be showing in Stratford-upon-Avon from the end of July.
(Women aren't getting it all their own way. For younger audiences, the all-male Shakespeare company Propeller is preparing its run of Pocket Dream, a 60-minute version of Midsummer Night’s Dream). .
At the Donmar: Henry IV
And if you can't make it up to Manchester to see the Maxine Peake Hamlet, console yourself with the thought that Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Donmar Henry IV from October.
Lloyd was lauded for Julius Caesar in 2012, another all-female play within a play set in a women’s prison. It was a sell-out testament to the fact that experimenting with gender does more than just making a point about inequality and the paucity of good parts for women – it also allows for a repositioning and refocusing of plays, especially well-known ones.
Actress Charlotte Josephine on her female Lucius
A creative new setting can shed new light on the play’s familiar tensions. As Lloyd told BBC Woman’s Hour , ‘Having one gender or another, whether it’s all-male or all female, does help to throw what the play’s about into really bold colours.’ Actress Charlotte Josephine , who played Lucius in Julius Caesar, told me: ‘The contained feeling of being in a female prison felt like a pressure cooker, heightening the threat of violence and raising the stakes.’
It’s not just well-known plays that are getting gender-blind makeovers. Shutters , Park Theatre, a triptych of plays with all-female casts, has just started its run at Finsbury Park's new neighbourhood theatre: Susan Glaspell’s 1916 Trifles is sandwiched between two European premiers: Philip Dawkins’ Cast of Characters and Brooke Allen’s The Deer.
Can women ever convince as men?
But how convincing can gender-blind performances really be for audiences? Extremely, as I discovered when I saw the preview of Shutters . Go in with an open mind, and ten minutes into Cast of Characters – an intentionally fragmented, fast-moving and dislocated telling of a family story – you may even forget the cast is Y-chromosome-free. In The Deer, actor Beverley Longhurst plays John, a teacher and the love interest of main character Clara. The sexual tension between the two is oddly successful – besides swept-back hair and men’s clothes, the cast rely almost entirely on physicality and masculine movement to communicate the opposite sex, to great effect.
Charlotte Josephine’s preparation for Lucius also leant heavily on the physical: she studied great male orators… and blokes on the tube: ‘Men are not afraid to take up space, vocally and physically, they own it,’ she told me. ‘We worked with that and found our way with it.’
It’s about suspension of disbelief, rather than any actor looking and sounding exactly like the opposite gender – but this is where the very strength of gender-blind theatre lies: when verisimilitude is sidestepped, audience members can get straight to the heart of the play.
'At some point in the rehearsal process you’ve got to forget that they’re men and stop concentrating on the character, and play the situation,’ Longhurst told me. ‘As Shakespeare said, “the play's the thing”.’
Beyond gender
Melissa Dunne, director, curated XY, Latitude Festival a gender-blind short play festival at this year’s multi-disciplinary extravaganza in Suffolk. The point of the festival, she tells me, is to heighten the story by deconstructing gender from the very origin of a play, rather than adapting old classics to alternative-gender casts. ‘If you take gender out of the equation, the story becomes clearer. It develops through a series of decisions – how much a character wants something, and what they do to achieve it.’
Really, gender-blind theatre isn’t about gender – it’s about seeing past it. ‘We’re not setting out to make gender judgements, we’re trying to embrace the character as a whole,’ Longhurst told me. ‘If the audience find themselves emotionally engaged with the character instead of observing the sex of the actor, I think we have achieved something, and served the play.’
And now it's the turn of Harriet Walter to take on the lead in Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female production of Henry IV, which opened at the Donmar Warehouse on Friday 3rd October.
Granted, men have played women since theatre’s beginnings, and women (albeit more rarely) have been known to play men since they were allowed on stage in 1660. But in 2014, the all-female theatre company production has been getting critical acclaim, challenging audiences to question their own preconceptions.
The all-female theatre company (and variations thereof)
At Sadler’s Wells, audiences were treated to Dada Masilo’s gender-blind production of Swan Lake in June, while Maria Aberg’s re-gendered The White Devil (RSC 2014), with the manipulative Flamineo played by a woman, will be showing in Stratford-upon-Avon from the end of July.
(Women aren't getting it all their own way. For younger audiences, the all-male Shakespeare company Propeller is preparing its run of Pocket Dream, a 60-minute version of Midsummer Night’s Dream). .
At the Donmar: Henry IV
And if you can't make it up to Manchester to see the Maxine Peake Hamlet, console yourself with the thought that Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Donmar Henry IV from October.
Lloyd was lauded for Julius Caesar in 2012, another all-female play within a play set in a women’s prison. It was a sell-out testament to the fact that experimenting with gender does more than just making a point about inequality and the paucity of good parts for women – it also allows for a repositioning and refocusing of plays, especially well-known ones.
Actress Charlotte Josephine on her female Lucius
A creative new setting can shed new light on the play’s familiar tensions. As Lloyd told BBC Woman’s Hour , ‘Having one gender or another, whether it’s all-male or all female, does help to throw what the play’s about into really bold colours.’ Actress Charlotte Josephine , who played Lucius in Julius Caesar, told me: ‘The contained feeling of being in a female prison felt like a pressure cooker, heightening the threat of violence and raising the stakes.’
It’s not just well-known plays that are getting gender-blind makeovers. Shutters , Park Theatre, a triptych of plays with all-female casts, has just started its run at Finsbury Park's new neighbourhood theatre: Susan Glaspell’s 1916 Trifles is sandwiched between two European premiers: Philip Dawkins’ Cast of Characters and Brooke Allen’s The Deer.
Can women ever convince as men?
But how convincing can gender-blind performances really be for audiences? Extremely, as I discovered when I saw the preview of Shutters . Go in with an open mind, and ten minutes into Cast of Characters – an intentionally fragmented, fast-moving and dislocated telling of a family story – you may even forget the cast is Y-chromosome-free. In The Deer, actor Beverley Longhurst plays John, a teacher and the love interest of main character Clara. The sexual tension between the two is oddly successful – besides swept-back hair and men’s clothes, the cast rely almost entirely on physicality and masculine movement to communicate the opposite sex, to great effect.
Charlotte Josephine’s preparation for Lucius also leant heavily on the physical: she studied great male orators… and blokes on the tube: ‘Men are not afraid to take up space, vocally and physically, they own it,’ she told me. ‘We worked with that and found our way with it.’
It’s about suspension of disbelief, rather than any actor looking and sounding exactly like the opposite gender – but this is where the very strength of gender-blind theatre lies: when verisimilitude is sidestepped, audience members can get straight to the heart of the play.
'At some point in the rehearsal process you’ve got to forget that they’re men and stop concentrating on the character, and play the situation,’ Longhurst told me. ‘As Shakespeare said, “the play's the thing”.’
Beyond gender
Melissa Dunne, director, curated XY, Latitude Festival a gender-blind short play festival at this year’s multi-disciplinary extravaganza in Suffolk. The point of the festival, she tells me, is to heighten the story by deconstructing gender from the very origin of a play, rather than adapting old classics to alternative-gender casts. ‘If you take gender out of the equation, the story becomes clearer. It develops through a series of decisions – how much a character wants something, and what they do to achieve it.’
Really, gender-blind theatre isn’t about gender – it’s about seeing past it. ‘We’re not setting out to make gender judgements, we’re trying to embrace the character as a whole,’ Longhurst told me. ‘If the audience find themselves emotionally engaged with the character instead of observing the sex of the actor, I think we have achieved something, and served the play.’
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