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Jul. 12th, 2009 11:36 amWent to Portsmouth City Museum last night for Oddsocks' performance of Richard III. It was an open air show, with a small metal stand and a couple of rows of chairs, all completely uncovered. The only problem was it rained all evening, sometimes rather heavily. I was wearing my new Island Games rain jacket...but of course that provided no protection for my bottom half.
Ann and her book group arrived about ten minutes before the start; we said a quick hello. In traditional Oddsocks style the play was preceded by the cast playing tunes on medieval instruments, then they introduced their Oddsocks alter egos. Kaitlin Howard was Izzie Breathin again; she announced "I play one of England's most famous and formidable Queens, Elizabeth I..."
Stan Dandyliver interrupted "Er...no, you're not that Queen Elizabeth. You're Edward IV's wife."
"Oh." Izzie soon recovered her cheerfulness : "On the bright side, that means I don't have to be the Virgin Queen now!" She turned to face one handsome guy in the front row who was among those cheering that announcement and winked with a nudging gesture "I'll see you later!"
Artistic Director Andy Barrow became Will Barrow, and said "I play the rightful heir to the throne, a good king, a kind, honourable man - Richard III!" Roland Foloffaclif pointed out "Actually, he's a hunchbacked, scheming, power-crazed child murderer."
Will rightly replied "According to Shakespeare. Who wrote for the king that won."
The play followed Shakespeare's script - though a few scenes not essential to the main plot were cut out - with several Oddsockian ad-libs between the lines (Richard greeted murderer Tyrell as 'a purveyor of potato crisps' and promised him 'one of Mr Walker's recipes' as a reward; he offered Buckingham 'the earldom of Southsea' but the duke said it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on), plus many a visual joke. Chamber pots were emptied over people's fronts; the Princes were smothered with their teddy bears; when Richard needed somewhere to rest his pike to woo Anne Neville he stuck it in Henry VI's corpse, causing pink party string to shoot out; Anne Neville dies suddenly of drinking poisoned wine and is carried off, legs around the neck of Catesby, who straightaway loses his wig - Richard quips "I dread to think where it's gone" and Catesby replies that at least it'll be warm... Best visual joke was the head of Lord Hastings. With diligent use of props and trap doors in the stage, they showed the actual head of the actress who played him on a plate under a lid; the plate was lifted up and moved around several times, and she would always be in the right place whenever her head needed to be displayed.
Between scenes the minstrels came back on to sing little songs summing up the point of the plot we were at, like "Richard and Buckingham are hatching a plan, to make ol' Richard the king of the land..." After the death of Edward IV, Queen Elizabeth was in the next scene : she sashayed saucily up to the hunk she'd spotted earlier and purred "I said I'd see you later, didn't I? You do know my husband's just died!" She accompanied that bit of news with a seductive pose and a wink.
Being Oddsocks, there was a measure of audience participation. We were divided down the middle into Lancastrians and Yorkists and each given a battle cry to shout with accompanying arm motions. We had to boo Richard at appropriate moments; several times he replied to the boos with "Pathetic" or "All at once, or not at all", and once said to the court "I apologise for the herd of cows".
Ann and I had more of a chat at the interval, about our respective new jobs and my holiday. Everyone took cover from the rain in the cafe, which did a roaring trade in coffee, tea and huge wodges of cake. One of the Oddsocks troupe came into the cafe to exhort us "It's nice and dry in the merchandise tent." The interval was extended to half an hour to let all the large crowd get served.
Ann and I walked back to the ferry together, still in pouring rain, and discussed shows we'd seen and her and Steve's holiday plans, then home to dry off.
Ann and her book group arrived about ten minutes before the start; we said a quick hello. In traditional Oddsocks style the play was preceded by the cast playing tunes on medieval instruments, then they introduced their Oddsocks alter egos. Kaitlin Howard was Izzie Breathin again; she announced "I play one of England's most famous and formidable Queens, Elizabeth I..."
Stan Dandyliver interrupted "Er...no, you're not that Queen Elizabeth. You're Edward IV's wife."
"Oh." Izzie soon recovered her cheerfulness : "On the bright side, that means I don't have to be the Virgin Queen now!" She turned to face one handsome guy in the front row who was among those cheering that announcement and winked with a nudging gesture "I'll see you later!"
Artistic Director Andy Barrow became Will Barrow, and said "I play the rightful heir to the throne, a good king, a kind, honourable man - Richard III!" Roland Foloffaclif pointed out "Actually, he's a hunchbacked, scheming, power-crazed child murderer."
Will rightly replied "According to Shakespeare. Who wrote for the king that won."
The play followed Shakespeare's script - though a few scenes not essential to the main plot were cut out - with several Oddsockian ad-libs between the lines (Richard greeted murderer Tyrell as 'a purveyor of potato crisps' and promised him 'one of Mr Walker's recipes' as a reward; he offered Buckingham 'the earldom of Southsea' but the duke said it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on), plus many a visual joke. Chamber pots were emptied over people's fronts; the Princes were smothered with their teddy bears; when Richard needed somewhere to rest his pike to woo Anne Neville he stuck it in Henry VI's corpse, causing pink party string to shoot out; Anne Neville dies suddenly of drinking poisoned wine and is carried off, legs around the neck of Catesby, who straightaway loses his wig - Richard quips "I dread to think where it's gone" and Catesby replies that at least it'll be warm... Best visual joke was the head of Lord Hastings. With diligent use of props and trap doors in the stage, they showed the actual head of the actress who played him on a plate under a lid; the plate was lifted up and moved around several times, and she would always be in the right place whenever her head needed to be displayed.
Between scenes the minstrels came back on to sing little songs summing up the point of the plot we were at, like "Richard and Buckingham are hatching a plan, to make ol' Richard the king of the land..." After the death of Edward IV, Queen Elizabeth was in the next scene : she sashayed saucily up to the hunk she'd spotted earlier and purred "I said I'd see you later, didn't I? You do know my husband's just died!" She accompanied that bit of news with a seductive pose and a wink.
Being Oddsocks, there was a measure of audience participation. We were divided down the middle into Lancastrians and Yorkists and each given a battle cry to shout with accompanying arm motions. We had to boo Richard at appropriate moments; several times he replied to the boos with "Pathetic" or "All at once, or not at all", and once said to the court "I apologise for the herd of cows".
Ann and I had more of a chat at the interval, about our respective new jobs and my holiday. Everyone took cover from the rain in the cafe, which did a roaring trade in coffee, tea and huge wodges of cake. One of the Oddsocks troupe came into the cafe to exhort us "It's nice and dry in the merchandise tent." The interval was extended to half an hour to let all the large crowd get served.
Ann and I walked back to the ferry together, still in pouring rain, and discussed shows we'd seen and her and Steve's holiday plans, then home to dry off.
