Boys and the Bard

This is Edward Hall (yes, yes, son of…) founder and director of the all-male, all-Shakespeare Propeller theatre company. The bag of glitter he is hefting is for his daughter, a left-over prop from Propeller’s current touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In repertoire with The Merchant of Venice it will take Hall and his ensemble to all the great centres of theatrical culture: Rome, Oxford, Tokyo, New York (where Merchant tends not to be put on very often, if you catch my drift) and Poole.

Propeller are now well into their second decade, and going strong. The ensemble, per se, has won awards, as has their director. They’ve had West End runs, they’ve played in a custard factory, and they’ve been shot at in Bangladesh – by the proper authorities, of course, not by disgruntled theatre-goers.

Arrived at almost by accident, in 1997, the basic nuts and bolts of Propeller style – the double casting, the contrasted double bills, the tiny budgets – are now standard operating procedure.

I ask Hall why he chose these two plays. “They’re both about how people react when promises are broken. But they’re also totally different: you’d swear they were written by different people.” So we have Dream, nominally set in Athens – but as much about Greece as The Mikado is about Japan – and not really a comedy so much as a sympathy. And then Merchant, a tragedy of vicious intolerance, here transported to a prison called Venice.

Hall’s actors have to go “the extra half yard”. Almost all fourteen (ten of them debutants) have to double up, and the understudies, on stage throughout, each have an entire play memorised. “I try to balance it out, so that people have different things to do. So Richard Frame is playing Hermia in Dream – girl, young, vulnerable – and a psychotic, violent Gratiano in Merchant. It’s interesting for me, and for the actors and for the audience.”

The parts aren’t strictly exchanged male-female. “Ed casts the best actor for the best role,” says Chris Myles, a veteran of every single Propeller show (and Countdown, to boot). But back to the ‘women’. “The great British obsession is drag,” Hall laughs. “We love dressing up as women!” Bob Barrett (Bottom and Antonio) assures me that these are proper female parts, though, not Barry Humphreys chamber maids (wigs and inflatable tits are present, but only in the Mechanicals’ play). “The key is that they don’t play at being a woman: they just basically play the truth of the character. As long as it’s emotionally pinned down, you can do anything in the theatre: you’ve got licence.”

Propeller have blurred every distinction and transgressed every boundary. For example, almost every line concerning Helena refers to her being white, pure white, white as milk, pearly white, snow white, virginal white and any other shade Homebase could come up with. Babou Ceesay plays Helena: at the risk of stating the obvious, he is no more white than he is female (NB – his surname, wonderfully, is pronounced ‘she say’).

Barrett concurs. “The fact that it’s a mixed company has added a new dimension. Merchant takes that kernel and fully explores it, as a play about racism, always pushing it. The casting is brilliant.” That the black actors wear white in Merchant, is, perhaps, just a ‘wardrobe coincidence’.

Propeller productions are enjoyed alike by children, pensioners and, most importantly, theatre critics (the categories are not, I admit, totally exclusive). “I like to see an audience where there’s a 14-year-old with an iPod and ripped jeans sitting next to a man in a suit,” says Hall. Certainly it’s the only time I can recall seeing a kid turn to his mum at half-time and say, ‘Oh, is that the end?’ and actually sound disappointed.

The diction is crystal, and the productions eye-catching. In Dream, Hippolyta (Emmanuel Idowu) looks like the unfortunate beneficiary of a Mick Jagger wardrobe clear-out. Richard Dempsey (as an icily reginal Titania) had his make-up done at a Kiss concert. And the set looks like someone left the Antiques Roadshow out in the rain. The backcloth – I checked this – is arctic camo net.

Hall doesn’t claim to have revolutionised Shakespeare. “But the shows are very physical and have a large element of light, music and acrobatics. For a young audience who might be expecting to sit down and listen to vaguely incomprehensible English for three hours, that’s refreshing.” Certainly is.