The Knight of the Burning Pestle

The Knight of the Burning To keep up-to-date with Cheek by Jowl, please visit cheekbyjowl.com/subscribe to join our mailing list /cheekbyjowl @wearecheekbyjowl P e s t l e @CbyJ /CheekbyJowl by Francis Beaumont cheekbyjowl.com 1 Cover photo: Nazar Safonov © Johan Persson. 2 Welcome Welcome Welcome to The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Our Russian company Welcome to the Barbican and our co-production of The Knight of the were last here in 2015 with Measure for Measure, and it’s a pleasure to Burning Pestle by our Artistic Associate, Cheek by Jowl. This UK premiere be back. We are particularly grateful to Evgeny Pisarev and Artem Mazur is performed by Cheek by Jowl’s Russian ensemble of long-term of Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre, without whom this production would collaborators, which includes actors from the Moscow Pushkin Drama not have been possible. Thanks also to Toni Racklin, Leanne Cosby, Theatre. The Pushkin, also a co-producer, was here in February with Cathy Astley, Bernie Whittle, Simon Bourne and the whole Barbican team three outstanding productions of their own. Now Cheek by Jowl’s for their continued enthusiasm and unwavering commitment to our work. Russian group returns after they were last seen at the Barbican with We would also like to thank our other co-producers, Les Gémeaux/ their acclaimed Measure for Measure in 2015. Sceaux/Scène Nationale and Centro Dramático Nacional, Madrid (INAEM), as well as the Arts Council England. Francis Beaumont’s subversive comedy was first performed in London in 1607. Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod turn the play into an We hope you enjoy the show. extravagant and hilarious farce which poses darker questions about art and culture. Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod We hope you enjoy the show. Toni Racklin Head of Theatre, Barbican 3 1 The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont Cast in alphabetical order: Creative team: For the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre: Kirill Chernyshenko Jasper Declan Donnellan Director Bilan Valentina Wardrobe Evgeny Pisarev Artistic Director Alexander Feklistov Grocer Nick Ormerod Designer Marina Lekontceva Makeup Artem Mazur General Manager Anna Karmakova Mrs Merrythought Alexander Sivaev Lighting Designer Olga Spiridonova Stage Manager Danila Kazakov Michael Pavel Akimkin Composer Ivan Vakulin Stagehand Andrei Kuzichev Humphrey Irina Kashuba Choreographer Anna Kolesnikova Consultant Producer Sergei Miller Venturewell Igor Teplov Assistant Director Surtitle Editor & Operator Alexei Rakhmanov Mr Merrythought Johan Persson Production Nazar Safonov Rafe Alexander Solomin Technical Director Photography Kirill Sbitnev Tim Anna Koshkina Production Manager Agrippina Steklova Grocer’s wife Feliks Kuvaev Light Anna Vardevanian Luce Alexey Korenkov Sound With thanks to: Dmitry Martynov Video Design Natalie Highwood, Simon Kennedy, Peter Kirwan, Eleanor Lang, Marcus Roche, Jem Talbot Alexey Eremin Video Produced by Cheek by Jowl and Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre in a co-production with the Barbican, London; Les Gémeaux/Sceaux/Scène Nationale; Centro Dramático Nacional, Madrid (INAEM). Olesya Patratiy Props Elena Semenova Wardrobe Supervisor The Knight of the Burning Pestle was first performed on 16 January 2019 at Les Gémeaux/Sceaux/Scène Nationale. 2 3 Plot me no plots 4Alexander Feklistov 7 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Beaumont’s subversive meta-drama burst onto the stage in 1607, at a critical moment when theatre was threatened by a popular movement increasingly hostile to art and culture. A disturbing comedy centuries ahead of its time, it subtly asks questions all the more relevant today: what is art for? Who is art for? The Knight of the Burning Pestle was first performed between 1607 –1611 at Blackfriars Theatre in London. While this was a solo effort, its author Francis Beaumont is most commonly remembered as being one half of the writing duo Beaumont & Fletcher. The two were contemporaries of William Shakespeare, and some of their major collaborative work was performed by Shakespeare’s London company the King’s Men. 6 9 Agrippina Steklova No man shall ever joy me as his wife, but he that stole me hence Anna Vardevanian, Andrei Kuzichev 11 9 Was this conflation and confusion of narratives Listening to the Audience behind the apparent poor reception of the play on stage? It may not have helped that the play that the Grocers demand is a parody of Cervantes’ in The Knight of the Don Quixote, itself a parody of the chivalric romance tradition, in which an old man reads too many books about courtly knights and decides Burning Pestle that he is one himself. Beaumont’s work is thus a parody of a parody, in which the Grocer’s by Dr Peter Kirwan apprentice Rafe plays a version of Don Quixote whose heraldic device, the burning pestle, is a syphilitic phallus. But if the play was first staged in The phrase ‘ahead of its time’ is much appreciate the play, given that the play is in 1607, this was some five years before the Spanish overused, but when applied to Francis many senses about the failure of audiences book was first translated into English. Tracing Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning to appropriately appreciate a play. these connections and allusions requires a lot Pestle, it feels entirely appropriate. In an From the moment that the Grocer and his of work on the part of an audience, especially age where film, television and literature wife first interrupt the Prologue of The if Don Quixote is unfamiliar. repeatedly make self-aware reference to London Merchant to demand the Players tell their own form – from Fleabag to The Lego However, this is also a play that celebrates a different story, the stage becomes a site Movie, Stranger than Fiction to House of amateurism and the joy of discovery. The subplot, for the negotiation of meaning. The Grocer’s Cards – Beaumont’s deeply metatheatrical in which Mrs Merrythought leaves her merry Wife attaches her colours to the wrong play seems positively contemporary. husband, only to return with head hung, stages romantic hero (if she went to see Romeo a similar negotiation of power to that happening The publisher Walter Burre informed the and Juliet, she’d be rooting for Paris). The between the Grocers and the playing company. dedicatee of the 1613 quarto that the play, Grocers demand extra scenes – a fight, the In order to return into her own house, Mr allegedly written in only eight days, was mustering of an army, a death – all of which Merrythought requires his wife – and everyone else ‘utterly rejected’ by its early audiences ‘for threaten to derail the bourgeois romantic – to sing. The singing is a levelling ritual, in which want of judgement, or not understanding comedy at the play’s centre. That the everyone from the romantic lead to the angry the privy mark of irony about it’. There is playing company manage to complete both father is required to participate. While this may something doubly ironic in Burre’s critique their own play and that demanded by the have showed off the virtuoso skills of the boy of the audience’s failure to appropriately Grocers is testament to the skill of actors. 10 13 Kirill Chernyshenko actors who originally performed the play, of the deputy, Andrei Kuzichev’s Angelo, to Explore Cheek by Jowl’s ground-breaking it also serves as a way to restore equality coerce her into sleeping with him. Obeying and good faith among the play’s competing the standard etiquette of western theatre, approach to performing Shakespeare characters. no audience members intervened to offer their support. Yet when the Grocers see Likewise, the Grocers are constantly injustice or conflict in The Knight of the negotiating with the Players to get the Burning Pestle, they speak up, interrupt, entertainment they have paid for. It may be stop the show, demand justice. In features tempting or easy to sneer at their inability “Takes the foregrounding the experience, reactions, interviews with to distinguish real from fictional characters, and active responses of its in-world or to interpret the conventional codes of reader on company audience, Beaumont’s play asks important a stock play, but sneering at our fellow members questions about the role of the spectator – an evocative audience members is hardly good form. to passively consume what is offered, It is also not clear that the Grocers are wrong. journey through or to actively participate in the creation While the subplot of the Merrythoughts is of something new? some of the most exciting amusing, and the romance of Jasper and Luce has plenty of dramatic interest with its European Shakespeare pitfalls, conflicts, and dramatic resolution Dr Peter Kirwan is Associate Professor of Early featuring a fake ghost, it is the ‘improvised’ productions of the past Modern Drama at the University of Nottingham. His scenes of Don Quixote requested by the book Shakespeare in the Theatre: Cheek by Jowl quarter-century.” Grocers that are the play’s most entertaining (Bloomsbury, 2019) is out now. His other books feature and that showcase Beaumont’s include Shakespeare and the Idea of Apocrypha – Pascale Aebischer, daring theatrical innovation. (Cambridge, 2015) and the edited collections University of Exeter, UK The play also, underneath the jokes, asks Canonising Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2017) and some serious questions of complicity and Shakespeare and the Digital World (Cambridge, agency. When Cheek by Jowl’s Russian 2014). He blogs at The Bardathon: http://blogs. Find out more ensemble last visited the UK, we saw Anna nottingham.ac.uk/bardathon www.bloomsbury.com/arden Vardevanian’s Isabella reach out to the audiences of Measure for Measure, asking @ArdenPublisher ‘Who would believe me?’ after the attempt 12 15 11 Cheek_by_Jowl_Ad.indd 1 14/03/2019 15:28 The Knight of the Burning Pestle company 17 15 1 2 Cheek by Jowl in Russia In 1986, Russian theatre director Lev Dodin internationally and its repertoire includes invited Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod Boris Godunov by Pushkin, Twelfth Night and to visit his company in Leningrad.

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