Keats' Move to Verse Brought to Life in Theatre

H&H Series Thursday, September 14, 2017 35 ETCETERA Keats’ move to verse brought to life in theatre The moment Hampstead poet consumption. He nursed her and John Keats’ turned from later his brother Tom. In medicine to verse is dramatised hindsight it looks odd that he in an immersive play in a wanted to be a doctor but he 200-year-old operating theatre. was a caring person who spent a great deal of his life looking Audiences of 45 a time will watch after other people and I think Rebel Angel from the “incredibly would have made a brilliant claustrophobic and atmospheric” doctor.” stands where medical students Graham-Campbell says the would often faint while watching play is relevant to younger operations. audiences in dramatising “the The Old Operating Theatre choice between a traditional Museum is near Guy’s Hospital money-making job and the arts.” where Keats began studying “Keats is a writer whose early medicine in October 1815. death, sense of melancholy, and Angus Graham-Campbell’s charisma have given him rock play follows the year when he star status.” met contemporary Percy Shelley It also reflects the pivotal role in Hampstead and had his first of mentors – Keats was assistant work published. to notorious surgeon Bill “It’s exciting to bring theatre ‘butcher’ Lucas while his into such a vibrant active space,” inspirational teacher Charles says Graham-Campbell, a trustee Cowden Clarke introduced him of the Keats-Shelley House in to progressive ideas and the left Rome where the poet died of wing Hampstead radical Leigh Old operating theatre. Inset, Rebel Angel Jonny Taylor as John Keats Pictures: MA WALKER IONA WOLFF tuberculosis in 1821. Hunt. An earlier version aired on “It’s about the people he was specific version of the play aspired to write for.” bodysnatchers writers and Radio 4 on the bicentenary of the around, the bad medical mentors performed in exactly the kind of Built in 1822, the theatre saw friends who shaped Keats’ poet’s birth and this revised and terrific literary ones at that space he would have operated in. female patients endure surgery decision. production is funded by the moment he was making the “Keats wanted to write for the without anaesthesia or basic Keats-Shelley Association. decision to give up medicine and theatre like Shakespeare, so the hygiene. Rebel Angel opens with September 19October 7 at Old “When Keats was 14 his dad fell commit himself to poetry. It’s old operating theatre doubles as a staged amputation and goes on Operating Theatre in St Thomas off a horse and his mother got tremendous to write a site Drury Lane the theatre he to feature doctors, students, Street oldoperatingtheatre.com. Theatre FOLLIES layer emotion beneath the National Theatre ironic “Could I Leave You?”, and her dancing is equally impressive. Stephen Sondheim and Philip Quast, another James Goldman’s 1971 dexterous vocalist, exposes musical finally gets the urban Ben’s insecurities, outing it deserves in and Peter Forbes’s Buddy Dominic Cooke’s expresses agony via blockbuster revival – with a vaudevillian clowning. Alex 37-strong cast and full Young is a feverishly neurotic orchestra. Follies isn’t just young Sally, Di Botcher “still here”, it’s thrilling, witty and dynamic in heartrending, spectacular. “Broadway Baby”, Josephine Barstow brings operatic The former stars of grandeur, and Tracie Bennett Weismann’s (read Ziegfeld’s) stops the show with “I’m Still Follies, a hit revue between Here”. the wars, reunite in their Just as the score and book soon-to-be-demolished riff off period music and Broadway theatre. Thirty American ideals, Bill Deamer’s years on, life choices are choreography is cleverly reconsidered, as they’re referential, while locating the faced – literally – with the yearning soul beneath the ghosts of their younger razzle dazzle. Vicki Mortimer selves. strikingly contrasts feathers Cooke uses the setting to 18718 Imelda Staunton as Sally Durant Plummer in FOLLIES at the National Theatre. Picture: JOHAN PERSSON and beads with crumbling thoughtfully explore the walls, as we drift from masks we don and roles we Phyllis are in a chic but frigid Staunton’s Momma Rose in standard here almost too raw regretful reality to dream play, while nostalgia is both society marriage, but Sally still another girl who wants too to bear. and memory. Well worth the seductive and poisonous. fixates on the past, when Ben much and rages against the Janie Dee lands Phyllis’s wait. Sally’s married to salesman might have chosen her. world. She spits out the words caustic barbs, but her vocal Buddy, while Ben and There are shades of Imelda in “Losing My Mind”, a great command means she can also Marianka Swain .

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