"Gawain and the Green Knight". Burton Taylor Studio. Review by Sam Wagman

Medieval English literature has never been a strong point of mine; chivalric codes and honour-bound knights have always felt distant, cold, and alien. The moral conventions are unattainable, their romances unimaginable, and conclusions unfeasible. The story of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, however, defies my indifference – central to Gawain’s quest is the very human anxiety and longing for legacy coupled with extraordinary bravery and a dash of foolhardy stupidity. More than anything, Sir Gawain’s tale is perfect for the pretentious university student, procrastinating his thesis and practicing alliterative verse.

Last brought to the Oxford stage (as far as I’m aware) by the brilliant Simon Corble in 2014, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been revised and reinterpreted over and over and over with each iteration parsing up new perspectives. Michael Bogdanov, writing about his own production of the chivalric romance in 1971, described the story as “rugged, wild but beautiful”. David Lowery, who adapted the text into his 2021 film The Green Knight, saw Gawain as filled with “sensual…red-blooded lustiness”. Certainly, Lowery’s version was the horniest Arthurian England has ever been, with the possible exception of Merlin’s unrealised homoeroticism. Every director and producer that has mined into this text has done so with a vision and clarity respectful of Gawain’s position as a profound expression of human experience. Unfortunately, I found myself hard-pressed to identify any guiding passion to Rogue Productions’ most recent adaptation at the Burton Taylor Studio.

Loosely adapted, I understand, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of the original 14^th century poem, Charlotte Oswell’s production never truly deviates from its source material. The Green Knight (Iam Guan Xiong) arrives at King Arthur’s court and challenges the assembled knights and nobles to a simple game: someone is to strike the Green Knight once with his own axe, on the condition that he be allowed to return the blow one year and one day later. The prize? The axe in question alongside honour and legacy and reputation etc. etc. etc. Young Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew, accepts the challenge and a year later we follow his fulfilment of the Green Knight’s test. To tell any more details would be to risk spoilers for the uninitiated and allows me to avoid the dishonour of reliving tonight’s production.

My first major gripe is not consigned to this performance - I will never understand the OUDS-wide aversion to performances in verse. The lyricism and melody it can provide to lumbering, archaic texts is invaluable and frankly, far more enjoyable than much of what’s been conjured up over the years. It offers performers moments of delicate reprieve and allows for flashes of evocative digression and metaphor. Rogue Productions’ Gawain and the Green Knight was neither rhythmic or evocative; it was flat. Every line was delivered as if it was being directly lifted from the pages of the Argos catalogue – an activity I’d have elicited greater joy from.

There was no major effort to modernize this text, one glistening with themes of dishonour, truth, and deceit. In the 10 years since Corble’s O’Reilly production, our world has been warped by a Trumpian post-truth age; lockdown parties, Russian election interference, and #MeToo have rocked our sense of reality, honour, and our expectations for public life have plummeted because of it. I was hoping for an adaptation of Gawain and the Green Knight that engaged with the 21^st century beyond the occasional modern costuming choice or phrase. This adaptation toyed with modernity with none of the theatrical risk it should entail. There were several moments hinting at a spark of directorial flair that were repeatedly snuffed out by a safe reversion to the traditional.

Even the staging, made up of three dirty curtains with a couple runes half-heartedly drawn on, betrayed a total lack of originality in this production. In comparison with last week’s The Cherry Orchard, which soared in its exalted and modern vitality, this felt like a play going through the motions. Not only that, but it wasn’t any fun. Arthurian England should be rollicking and silly if faltering at drama. The only genuinely funny aspect of this production lay in the bizarre paganistic gear on King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Percival which I fear may have gotten lost on its way to the Keble O’Reilly’s The Bacchae.

The one factor preventing a long-overdue trip to the Argos warehouse was the magnificence of Connor Webster’s performance as Sir Gawain. Webster elevates the sloppy material into something eminently raw. Gawain is a difficult figure to portray; is he meek or conniving, weak or scheming? Webster injects the character with a breathless abandon, haunted by the spectre of his own legacy and the societal bounds he’s yearning to break. If I could put to stage every essay-based breakdown I’ve had these past three years, I’d be casting Connor Webster as my leading man. His Gawain is one in the throes of reckoning with the self. This is an individual riddled with slowly realised fears of his own transience and it’s savoured tantalizingly by Webster. I can only applaud the performance, not just for its daring, but for its ability to string together a production with no real purpose. I only wish to catch Webster in a show deserving of his talent.

“Don’t let this be my ending”, Gawain groans during a particularly icy spell in his quest; it’s as if Webster was speaking through the aeons to those original authors of the poem, apologising. Those first storytellers, racked with the familiar fear of mortal ephemerality, warrant a production that pays tribute to their years-defying verse and gifts their words oxygen anew. Perhaps that production will grace Oxford soon, but for now, the Burton Taylor is suffocating.