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Review: Play: 1997 RSC Summer Season at Stratford-upon-Avon

A dark wooden floor and a red curtain greeted the audience on entering the theatre. Onto the curtain were projected snatches of Hieronimo's metrical lamentation: 'Here lay my hope, and here my hope hath end: / Here lay my heart, and here my heart was slain: / Here lay my treasure, here my treasure lost: / Here lay my bliss, and here my bliss bereft.' This (literal) projection and fragmentation of the language went some way to explaining the production's successes and its failures. It succeeded in communicating a primeval rhythm-in language, in meaning and, therefore, in revenge-but its reliance on this deep metrical quality precluded the exploration of tragedy in human terms-of emotional connections between father and son, between lover and mistress, or king and subject. Michael Boyd's production of The Spanish Tragedy was driven by a Revenge shaped not by human passions or jealousies but operating according to a kind of mechanical regularity. There was no spontaneous human action, only a metronomic fatalism; events of the play didn't appear to be happening spontaneously, rather the playas a whole seemed to be grammatically declined. This structural regularity was emphasised by the fearful symmetry of the opening and closing moments. Andrea's inaugural speech began haltingly-he missed words, repeated himself, blanked and hesitated. As he paused, Revenge, coaching from above, gently supplied the missing word or line so that as Andrea gathered momentum and fluency, it was clearly in accordance with a script written for him by Revenge. It was as though Revenge were acting as a prime mover, winding up the play and allowing events to take their course. This idea was recapitulated in the closing moments. The murdered Horatio sat upstage centre in the same place in which Andrea had started the play. He spoke Andrea's opening speech with the same degree of faltering hesitation until, once again, Revenge came to his aid. Tellingly, however, as Tristan Sturrock's Horatio grew in confidence, the orchestral score swelled up also, drowning his words until he was left mouthing inaudibly, a dwarf against the scale of the theatrical process which gave him life. Like the device of bringing the three witches on at the end of Macbeth, this repetition of the opening frame gave the production a powerful fatalistic impulse, implying the internecine circularity of murder and counter-murder. The rhythmic repetition of the impulse to revenge was more powerful than any of the temporary human agencies whose petty struggles were just a pulse in the greater pattern. In this way, Boyd emphasised the overarching puissance of Revenge and the corresponding impotence of his human protagonists. This was an extremely Hobbesian, dark and brutish version of the play. Gone were the inflamed passions of the Mediterranean setting-there were no hot tempers here. Instead, Revenge, in a cold black robe and hangman's hood, speaking through a radio-microphone, was automated and calculating. He traversed the stage with all the stately ponderousness of a mechanised deity. The consequence of this was to underline the machiavellian wisdom of Lorenzo's role as both