REVIEW: The Herbal Bed @ Theatre Royal

THE HERBAL BED

PETER WHELAN

Theatre Royal Brighton

“Love changes us. Love’s alchemy! In that furnace everything changes. Hard stone shatters, iron goes soft and turns to liquid… and so do we… in love’s fire”

Based upon real events from Stratford-upon-Avon in the summer of 1613, The Herbal Bed is a tense thriller about human desire. When William Shakespeare’s daughter is slandered and accused of adultery, her family fall under intense public scrutiny. Culminating in a dramatic trial at Worcester Cathedral, the scandal threatens to destroy her family’s reputation within their tight-knit community. Originally produced to great acclaim by the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Herbal Bed gave writer Peter Whelan his award of Playwright of the Year

Director James Dacre draws convincing performances from all the actors involved and they all provide engaging believable performances, this is very much an ensemble piece and the subtle changes of status, honour and reputation are teased out well with the focus on the different power and privilege of the characters. The artful and studied design from Jonathan Fensom just adds so much to setting the atmosphere of this performance and the garden feels alive, and the place of hope, assignation, scandal and private actions that reverberate greatly on the public stage. Emma Lowndes brings depth to Susana’s character and her performance is superb, Michael Mears’s sinister grey Puritan Vicar General is a lofty shadow of judgmental zeal, quite delightfully perfect. Jonathan Guy Lewis as the husband doing what he thinks he must while (not) dealing with this things he can’t – is a soft portrait of compromise and work. It’s a strong cast, cast well.

This lovely play, more than a marriage drama, more than a thriller, more than a period piece and more than the sum of its parts is lovely theatre and the Theatre Royal is a superb space to enjoy it. Whelan’s slow long gaze at people and the actions that drive them to follow their hearts, observe their commitments and find the best way to be human is set in amongst the great puritan upheavals of Shakespeare’s time (it was the Puritans who eventual closed down the Globe, tore it down in fact.) and gives us a human focus to the great conversation of freedom of conscience, belief and spiritual relationships, both with love and with God, however that might be played out and the interplay between personal, social and reputation, which like today, rules the actions of so many people.

There’s big themes being looked at here, about the nature of privacy, of social expectations, of being an intelligent women in a society where that’s not wanted, about truth in a world where nothing is certain anymore, about empirical attitudes overturning credulous superstitions and about character and intention, all displayed in small precise peeps into the interlocking lives of these characters and their internal and external conversations. Whelan’s deft and clever prose always keeping his ear to the ground of the bawdy fruity dialogue of the time, giving us laughter and profoundness is equal measure. His gentle precise pressure on the narrative pedal keeps the plot ticking along and all the parts have been rotated into place for a rollicking second half, the court scene is wonderfully intense, reminded me of The Crucible, all puritan rigorous sneer and searing quivering intensity where no one can win and there’s no way out of the all-seeing judgement of God.

This is a lovely piece of work, of plausible women doing daily struggle in a world where there’s no rewards for thier gender for intelligence, companion, adventure or discovery, whose wiles and ability to see the bigger picture and spin a greater, more convincing story steers a ship of male fools safely to shore. My companion was enchanted by the evening and by the wonderful use of Tudor vernacular for the various herbs and plants being referred to throughout the play.