I’m going to admit something rather dangerous for a theatre critic: for a while I have been avoiding Shakespeare. Tired of seeing the same old plays thrust into space, the Cold War or a bowl of soup, I have been thoroughly burnt out by the Bard.
That was until Buzz Studios’ Petty Men caught my eye, a two-hander in the basement of the Arcola. I was intrigued by the title and the blurb - claiming to be ‘after William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’ and in memory of Mary Ann “Buzz” Goodbody, the first female director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).
Buzz’s tragically short career in the ’60s and ’70s revolutionised the RSC and she was instrumental in creating The Other Place in Stratford, campaigning to the artistic director at the time, Trevor Nunn, for a larger auditorium, and pitching work at the local population, whom she described as “notoriously hostile to us.”
Buzz is honoured by nephew Adam Goodbody, who explained: “Buzz Studios is about keeping my aunt’s legacy alive — her belief that theatre should challenge, provoke, and belong to everyone. Petty Men feels like the perfect first step in celebrating her radical spirit and bringing her ideals to a new generation.”
Written by John Chisham, Júlia Levai and Adam Goodbody, featuring performances by Goodbody and Chisham, and directed by Levai, we have a tight little production. Tomás Palmer’s set starts out naturalistic: a dressing room, strip lights, kettle, big illuminated mirror, with the bare walls of the space and slight damp smell adding extra veracity.
Waiting in the below, Cassius (Goodbody) and Brutus (Chisham) warm up-self-conscious - and so begins the “real” play on the stage above them, relayed through monitors. The pair start a recreation of the play with the limited space and props available, which twists and turns with jealousy, personal recrimination and eventually, total bedlam. Think a little Waiting for Godot and a much less sexy The Maids.
Both actors demonstrate precise comic work in very different ways. Chisham: relaxed, nonchalant, adding whisky to his coffee as a celebration for the hundredth show, but harbouring barely concealed demons. Goodbody: walking the line between earnest and pretentious, all the while devilishly ambitious.
Now, the uninitiated may be asking - who wants to see a cheap production of Julius Caesar in a basement? Until recently, I would have said ‘not me,’ even with all the situational comedy added. But wait, “Hold my bloody dagger”, says the creative trio.
As the characters lose their grip on reality and the play above starts to go wrong, Lucía Sánchez Roldán whips out red spotlights at very close range and some nightmarish strobe. Palmer crafts props at surreal sizes, and miniature models of the space to further play with scale and reality around us. Tingying Dong mixes thumping and drumming with techno and screams, and Perri Schofield starts picking at the fabric of theatre-land as the captions on the screen on the upstage wall throughout start to push themselves into the actors’ reality. It’s meta and self-referential, but the breakdown of the actors’ mental stability is enthusiastically depicted by all involved.
Levai’s direction makes ambitious use of the limited space and a gifted cohort of creatives and performers. This show could easily leap to a bigger theatre and budget, and soar. It is very much a show for actors, laughing at Shakespearian convention and those upheld by the RSC. The desperation and murderous jealousy is palpable, but the ever-building crescendo has trouble sustaining to the very end. However, this butcherous re-creation of the Ides of March reignited my enjoyment of the genre and introduced me to the work of an unappreciated pioneer.
You can catch Petty Men at the Arcola Theatre until 20 December.
