You may not have heard of playwright and literary manager Robin Hooper or his actor brother, Jim, but for those in the know, they’re theatre aristocracy who have quietly been at the heart of our business for decades.Jim goes from strength to strength at the Royal Shakespeare Company, loyally contributing beautiful cameo performances to every production he’s in. But we haven’t heard much from Robin recently. So it’s all more pleasurable that the tiny Hope Theatre have encouraged him to dust off his play, FOUL PAGES, and are presenting it for the next few weeks.
The setting is a country manor house in 1603 where the Countess of Pembroke is hoping to persuade King James to free her lover, Sir Walter Raleigh, by getting him in a forgiving mood with a performance of Shakespeare’s AS YOU LIKE IT. With plague and political unrest troubling London, the good news is theatre folk are all too keen to swap the capital for the Wiltshire countryside. The bad news is that theatre folk are all too keen to swap the capital for the Wiltshire countryside. Hooper has spent a lifetime around theatrical types and is adept at capturing their preening, rivalries & misdirected passion; none of which is helpful to politically delicate Jacobean diplomacy. True to form, the players squabble over casting and romantic rivalries, threatening the success of the venture.
At this time, prominent female roles were played by pre-pubescent boys and lust for “boy sex”, boy-on-boy and man-on-boy, fuels the ensuing chaos. Fortunately the young boys are played by young adults, which takes the sting out of a play that might otherwise seem like a celebration of what is regarded as paedophilia and child exploitation in the modern world.
Ian Hallard plays William Shakespeare, diplomatically dissuading his patron from tampering with his comedy. Handsome and dashing with a pearl earring, he beautifully captures the patience of a long suffering artist having to carefully manage a patron who believes investment buys the right to interfere. Clare Bloomer is terrific as the Countess, effortlessly combing public high spirits with private insecurity. I’d like to see much, much more of her in future productions. Olivia Onyehara plays her maid with a quiet bemused dignity amidst all the “bumming”, Tom Vanson brings wit and swagger to the role of the king, easily swayed by his desire for boys, and Jack Harding as his servant contributes a glowering, dangerous presence. James King as Raleigh’s dog seizes the many opportunities that the role allows to make the audience adore him.
The rest of the cast capture the vanity and hunger for love, sex and purpose of vivacious boys on the edge of manhood amidst the hunger of men who wish to possess them.
Gifted lighting designer Ben Jacobs does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of many locations and moods. I rather wish director Matthew Parker had trusted him to do this with shifts in lighting. Instead he interrupts the flow of a series of short scenes with twenty-second scene changes in which the cast needlessly adjust a table to signal a change in locale, accompanied by rock music. I did like the juxtaposition of contemporary music with the period setting though, and Rachel Ryan’s costumes mix ancient and modern styles to dress the cast like rent boys from the 1980s.
This piece is no WOLF HALL, Hilary Mantell’s beloved evocation of the danger and urgency of labyrinthine court politics, but neither does it aspire to be. Parker primarily presents Hooper’s play as a decadent romp of forbidden lust and backstage gossip. If that’s your thing you’ll have a great time.
FROZEN is a play from 1998 by Bryony Lavery that consists of a series of monologues and two or three-person scenes. It explores the events that lead to a woman confronting the serial killer who murdered her young daughter.