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16
November
RICHARD III Musical blog 2 by Jon Trenchard
Judgement Day: RICHARD III The Musical?
Judgement Day is nigh! We have just a day and a half left of technical rehearsals before our first preview in Coventry on Thursday. We still have lots of ideas for the play, and lots could change even now. For example, the soundscape of the show will become quite different now that we are rehearsing in a theatre: our new Sound Designer, David, can now add not only reverb effects to our voices, but also other recorded sounds - a feature that would controversially break from Propeller's tradition of producing all sound effects live from the stage! I think recorded sounds could be really effective for the eerie ghost scene in the second half...But the jury is still out on all these ideas, so good luck to Ed and the creative team who will be making final decisions this week to sort the wheat from the chaff!
Live music fans shouldn't be disappointed though: at present, we have about 40 sung musical cues in the production, involving 11 different tunes and multiple arrangements. Some of the actors have jokingly named the production Richard III The Musical ! Given that the music is playing such a large part in this production, I thought I'd try writing some programme notes about some of the tunes we have included so far...
In Propeller rehearsals, the music is either written by the company or sourced from music we know. We play or sing our suggestions to Ed, and he has the final say about what will make it into the production, and at which point in the play. Much of the music in Richard III has been chosen because the lyrics seem appropriate to the play, but with the songs I have suggested and arranged I have tried to keep two musical themes running throughout the play: descending scales and semi-tone intervals.
I remember Ed saying to me before rehearsals began that this production might track Richard's descent into hell, and a number of the songs we have chosen reflect this idea through repeated descending scales: Down among the dead men, an 18th century British folk tune, has become our tune for the murderers in the Tower and repeats the word 'Down' as the pitch descends; a descending chromatic scale forms the bass line of Irreprehensibilis est ("It is beyond reproach"), part of a 19th century motet by Bruckner called Locus Iste, with which we are underscoring various in the first half of the play; and our arrangement of Dies Irae at Buckingham's death (the climax of Richard's killings) employs the same descending chromatic scale but in higher vocal lines.
This theme of chromaticism is continued in the modern close-harmony arrangements we sing which explore the relationship between the two notes a semi-tone apart (ie. notes that are very close in pitch). When i was growing up, my brother and I (both choir boys) used to play out our sibling rivalry by one of us singing a note, and the other singing the semi-tone next to it: the resultant discord forced one of us to change our note to achieve harmony. So I thought that the juxtaposition of discordant semi-tones, which is a feature of modern harmony, could reflect the civil discord caused by Richard and Richmond's rivalry for the Crown.
As a theme for Richmond the 'Welshman', we are using a traditional Welsh hymn tune called Rhuddlan, (Judge Eternal, throned in splendour), complete with 19th century lyrics about 'purging the realm' and 'cleasing the nation'. These words have a disturbing resonance for us in the modern world, so I wanted to write a modern arrangement with lots of semi-tones clashing and resolving to compliment Richard's ambiguous character - beautifully persuasive, yet deeply unsettling. The older songs we sing too, Now is the Month of Maying (a 15th century madrigal by Thomas Morley) and the Coventry Carol (traditionally sung in 16th century mystery plays depicting King Herod ordering the massacre of innocent children) both oscillate between major and minor keys, hinging around a semi-tone difference in harmony, with the result that the listener feels constantly surprised and ill at ease.
And what about my initial idea of a Requiem Mass? Well, the first port of call for any Mass for the Dead is the Dies Irae , a 13th century medieval poem that used to be recited at Catholic funerals. This dramatic text about the Day of Judgement has been set to music by many classical composers, and at one point in rehearsals, I suggested using Mozart's version of Rex Tremendae Majestatis for Richard's coronation. In the end, that idea was shelved (after all we don't have a full orchestra to do it justice!), and we have stuck to the first three lines of the Latin poem and the original plainsong tune - "Dies irae, dies illa, solvet Saeculum in favilla, teste David cum Sibylla / A day of Wrath that Day will be, when the Age will dissolve into dust, as David and Sibyl foretold." Our various arrangements of this text develop in complexity through the course of the play and underscore various curses and deaths. We are also using a modern close-harmony arrangement of the final words of the Dies Irae poem to book-end the production, "O Pi Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem aeternam / O blessed Lord Jesus, grant them eternal rest."
So when you come to see Propeller's Richard III, you won't hear an entire Requiem Mass as I ambitiously intended before rehearsals started. But you will hear, if not too much changes in the next few days, the beginning and end of the Mass for Dead, with a whole range of music from all ages in between, marking Richard's discordant descent into hell.
Jon Trenchard
15.11.10
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Propeller’s Richard III, Seen on November 20th 2010
Richard of Richard III fame may not be ‘shaped for sportive tricks’, but as this Richard (played by Richard Clothier) chivvies, chills, threatens and seduces his victims, he seems to seduce the audience, too. His allies (does that include us?) know they lead a dangerous existence. Get on the wrong side of him and the axe, chain-saw, or scythe (a convenient shape for disembowelment as the poor Buckingham found out) awaits. Some writers believe Elizabethan audiences probably never forgot they were watching a play, and in this production of Richard III by Propeller neither do we – and it must be said we are grateful for such protection from the knowing gaze of this smiling villain. The production is framed and shaped by music – it is no musical (being far too grimly comical for that) but this and everything else, costumes, scenery and casting, conspire to interrupt the suspension of disbelief. Perhaps this is why, just when you think you’re safe, the ridiculous gets right to the emotional jugular. Take the murder of the two children in the tower. The young Prince Edward and the younger Duke of York are two naughty little puppets, Edward sporting a slightly belligerent jaw, and we giggle with them when they laugh at Richard’s deformity - ‘Because that I am little, like an ape,| He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders.’ Richard, stock still, looks down at them; the game is over; they are chilled and so are we, as we contemplate the dead babes of history for real. Then it is his turn again; and so their puppet-masters take them dancing to bed to the sound of a jingling lullaby – it stops, pauses ominously, starts again. Their murderer Tyrrel, killed on stage by Richard in this production, collapses into an impossible shape (like an unstringed puppet), then the music starts up again and so does he - and out he goes like a mechanical toy. Ouch – but, we laugh again. As all the above suggests, this production is meta-theatrical from the get-go. Before the usual opening soliloquy, a chorus of white-coated masked figures meets our eyes and it is they who sing us from one scene to the next; one moment we hear church music (signalling kingship and death), the next we hear well-known tunes that bring out the comedy in some of the most bloody scenes. These singing, scene-shifting puppeteers could be anything from medics to butchers to warehouse workers. Under their control, hospital screens and plastic abattoir curtains wheel relentlessly about, enfolding and encircling the players as Richard plots. The hospital screens, blood-bags and loud doctor’s watch remind that this entire generation is sick (why would we be watching them in this play otherwise), but, more literally King Edward IV (Robert Hands) and his cronies are drunkards, more interested in transfusions of blood-red wine than politics and so it is pretty easy for loving brother Richard to slip poison into his glass – of course knowing this Richard, it is inevitably something designed to make him die slowly, and agonisingly, his audible heart beat stopping to a spray of bloody projectile vomit that erupts ceiling-wards. Later, we don’t see Hastings (Thomas Padden) lose his head by the chain-saw but we do see an apparently never-ending jet of blood spurt up, to spray unreadable dripping hieroglyphics. Woe-betide anyone late back from the interval – not wishing to spoil Propeller’s fun part way through the run, no detail is given here. Suffice it to say we wondered if we were about to be co-opted into this bloody farce, before the Scrivener turned us into citizens approving Hastings’ death and calling for Richard’s coronation as the curtain rose again. Complicity without suspension of disbelief – that’s quite a feat of the production but of course that’s just what keeps murderous despots in power. The casting of the women in this play, with no attempt to match the age of the actor to the age of the role (Kelsey Brookfield plays Richard’s mother for instance), and no more than a nod in the direction of verisimilitude in costume and make-up, reinforces this overall effect. Nevertheless the seduction of Lady Anne is chilling: this is the combined effect of Jon Trenchard’s voice (sensitive to every emotional nuance in the words); the rhythm of the words (more and more staccato as she yields to the seduction, and also, later, as she faces death after a wobbling coronation march over a pile of body bags); and then the physical control (‘sportive trickery’ of a sort), as he gets her, and us, exactly where he wants us. Modern productions sometimes struggle with Richard’s falling-apart, which can come across as absurd. Perhaps because this production deals quite blatantly in story-telling, there is no such problem. This is a tale of good and evil with a nursery-rhyme ending. So, as black-garbed Richard is cursed in his dreams, the white-clad Richmond, sleeping in mirror image, is blessed. Even those who don’t know the play know this subtle, false, treacherous man is coming to a bad end. In the end we feel no compassion as we contemplate the gory visage of the dead Richard, who, of course, comes briefly back to life to laugh.
richard iii
saw the production on Thursday - thought it was brilliant. It's the first time we've been at a Propellor production and we would definately come to see another production. Well done
Richard III
This sounds the most ambitious production yet! I am so looking forward to seeing it, but disappointed that I will be unlikely to see it several times as I have other productions as you are at the Watermill for such a short time and not at Oxford this year! It is already difficult to get tickets at The Watermill!!!