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There’s a bit at the end of the Globe Young Players’s production of ‘The Malcontent’ which is pretty good. It’s essentially the curtain call, where the cast let rip with a bit of freestyle dancing.
Such freedom is what Caitlin McLeod’s production cries out for from curtain up. Instead we get a horribly dry staging of an already convoluted text. John Marston’s 1603 play is a tale of mistaken identity and Machiavellian revenge. Court jester Malevole is not really a jester; he’s the deposed duke, and while pretending to be a funny man he manages to expose the court’s villains and wannabe usurpers. Before he finally unveils himself, he also learns that his wife is pretty much the only virtuous woman in the kingdom. Quelle surprise!
It may sound simple in summary, but there are a load of minor, confusingly named roles and myriad sub-plots, and this show makes it almost excruciatingly difficult to follow any of them. Some judicial cutting would have been prudent before handing it to the 12-16-year-old cast, who speak the lines well but aren’t confident enough with the language to make it actually mean anything. The script is fairly funny, and occasionally it’s as bawdy as hell – there’s a lot of denouncing loose women (and a lot of loose women to denounce) and everyone seems to be making cuckolds of each other. All of which feels slightly odd in the hands of the youngsters.
The actors clearly have promise, it’s just they’re so restricted by McLeod’s unimaginative staging on the dimly-lit Sam Wanamaker stage that there’s barely a moment where you believe any of it. Sam Hird plays a wonderfully camp Maquerelle and Freya Parks has a witty wisdom as another jester, Passarello, and the ensemble as a whole move the piece forward at a fair clip.
The Globe Young Players is certainly a nice idea, and will surely be of tremendous benefit to the young actors enrolled in its ranks. It’s a pity it’s not been realised with a good first production. Malcontent? You bet I was.