The Tempest live streamt

Whoever came up with the idea of live streaming top theatrical performances into cinemas around the country and beyond deserves all the riches of Heaven bestowed upon her/him. If nothing else, it permits us masses to retain a fuzzy glow about something, even as our human rights are removed, the NHS and schools are sold off for profit, and our children's wages line the pockets of slum landlords.

The first live stream I saw was a 2011 performance of John Hodge's 'Collaborators', a satire based on the relationship between writer Mikhail Bulgakov and Joseph Stalin, in which Simon Russell Beale played the dictator with a (to me very familiar, and therefore terrifying) West Country accent. It was SRB again in a live stream of King Lear three years ago, also at the National, and again three nights ago, playing Prospero in the RSC's latest production of The Tempest.  

Guardian/Tristram Kenton

This time Beale's got his work cut out, being pitted against a jaw-dropping array of special effects that I'd never thought to see in a theatrical production (even one being shown in a cinema). How does an actor impose her- or himself on a whirl of bats, mad dogs, drowning fathers, and fiery spirits, while a pine tree imprisons Ariel before the audience's eyes, tightening and cracking its branches? Rough magic indeed. He manages it, however, as the commanding and mostly calm (but sometimes frighteningly rageful) eye of the storm, ultimately conquering his desire to control others and converting his need for revenge to pity. A humanity that trumps all digital wizardry.

Not all the casting was great. The courtiers were fairly forgettable, Miranda tended to bleat at moments of high tension, Ferdinand resembled Jimmy Carr and was similarly irritating. Stephano and Trinculo were hilarious, however, even though the latter's costume made him look as if he'd stepped straight out of the video for The Prodigy's Firestarter. I was even enthralled by the betrothal masque, through which I usually doze. As for Caliban - well, Caliban made me cry, though that's nothing new. 

In fact, the production stirred a seething of emotions. On a personal level, the settling of post-divorce legal wrangling a few days earlier also put an end to a baleful, 36-year enchantment, allowing me to inhabit fully my brave new world.  More broadly, the intimations in the play of Shakespeare's withdrawal from the theatre, mirrored by Prospero's breaking of his staff, recalled more recent losses, underlined by the first anniversary of David Bowie's death, and I wept a little for all our lost magicians.  And now that the Brexit button is about to be pushed and those who would turn this country into John Of Gaunt's island fortress hold sway, the rest of us must, like Prospero, find a new way forward, where every third thought shall (not quite yet) be the grave.   

Рукописи не горят

It was off to Vue Cinema in Longwell Green last night to see a live screening of the new play by John Hodge, 'Collaborators', a satire based on the relationship between writer Mikhail Bulgakov and Joseph Stalin.  Much as I love Bulgakov (I studied 'The Master and Margarita' as part of my Russian degree and it's still right up there in my top three books ever), I found my enthusiasm waning as we hacked across Bristol through rainy rush-hour traffic.  But although I have some reservations, upon reflection it was worth the effort. 

Even in reality, Bulgakov had a somewhat surreal relationship with the great dictator.  Stalin was a self-declared fan, particularly of the 1926 play 'Days of the Turbins', which he claimed to have seen 15 times.  This was enough to protect Bulgakov from the fate suffered by almost every other critic of the Soviet Union during the 1930s - exile to the gulags or execution - although his plays were not produced, his writing not published.  Then Bulgakov was promised that his play about Molière would be unbanned, if he wrote one about the young Stalin to commemorate the dictator's 60th birthday. 

In 'Collaborators' we are taken deep into the terminally ill writer's feverish imagination, where, in a sort of Faustian pact, the two protagonists virtually swap places, with Stalin writing a suitably heroic play  about himself while Bulgakov finds himself sanctioning orders that will eventually lead to the Great Terror of 1937-38.  And this is where I have a problem.  'Collaborators' suggests that Stalin was the ultimate winner in this battle, with Bulgakov reduced to a cipher representing the compromised artist.  As it is, both Russia and the Ukraine claim him as a national hero, and the iconic 'The Master and Margarita' is regarded by many Russians as the greatest novel ever written.  As Woland himself says, 'manuscripts don't burn'. 

Hodge's flawed concept is redeemed by some great acting, particularly by Alex Jennings as Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale as Stalin.  Both evolve through the course of the play, Bulgakov seeming to age as his ordeal and illness progress, and Stalin metamorphosing from a seemingly bumbling, avuncular innocent (with a disturbingly Bristolian accent) to the monster he finally declares himself to be: 'Killing my enemies is easy.  The challenge is to change the way they think, to control their minds.  And I think I controlled yours pretty well.  In years to come, I'll be able to say: Bulgakov?  Yeah, we even trained him.  He gave up.  He saw the light.  We broke him, we can break anybody.  It's man versus monster, Mikhail.  And the monster always wins.'  It is a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of the psychopath - master-manipulator behind a buffoonish mask which only slips towards the end of the play to reveal the evil behind it.