"The Two Gentlemen of Verona". Oxford Playhouse

This production is about so much more than just two gentlemen from Verona. It is the cultural event of the summer in Oxford. For the students involved, it’s possibly the theatrical event of their entire university career.

Sir Greg Doran, recently retired Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, is the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre for 2023-2024. He is the 29^th person to hold that post, and normally the incumbent gives three lectures during their tenure, one per term.

Greg didn’t want to do that.

He doesn’t see himself as a great talker (although many would disagree). But it’s fair to say he does know how to direct plays. His productions have been the Gold Standard for Shakespeare for longer than any of the actors in this production have been alive. But throughout his illustrious career, there has been one play from the fabled First Folio that has always eluded him, and that is The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

So Greg decided that, for his contribution as Cameron Mackintosh Professor, he would direct Two Gentlemen, and he would do it at the Oxford Playhouse, acted and crewed entirely by students.

Whether the production itself is good, bad or indifferent, that decision is a remarkable gift. It will potentially change the lives of young actors who are aiming for a career on the stage, and through rehearsals with one of the world’s leading directors, it will have taught them an immense amount about playing Shakespeare.

So, no pressure then.

Frequently, when expectations are sky-high, it’s incredibly difficult for a play, film or any creative endeavour to live up to them. Fortunately, The Two Gentlemen of Verona doesn’t merely live up to expectations. It demolishes them. It soars above them. It’s a joy from start to finish, bursting with great performances, wonderful ideas, heart-breaking poetry, sure-fire comedy, and, in Rocky the cockapoo, a truly great dog.

(I actually met Rocky on his way to the Playhouse, and in conversation with his owner, who is a stage manager at the theatre, I learnt a couple of the secrets behind his approach to the role of Crab the dog. First of all, the actor playing Launce has sausages secreted in all of his pockets, enabling Rocky to convey convincing adoration for his co-performer. Secondly, he doesn’t like exiting stage right. That’s basically it. An actor prepares.)

But Rocky is merely the icing on a wonderful cake of great performances. In the lead roles of Proteus and Valentine, Rob Wolfreys and Will Shackleton are simply breathtaking. Shackleton is no stranger to this big stage, but he has clearly learned a lot under Doran’s guidance. His Valentine is passionate, principled and poignant. Wolfreys is making his theatrical debut (words I find hard to believe even as I type them, but it’s true). Wilder and more fickle than his buddy, he has the presence of a young Elvis Presley, all waggling hips and chiseled cheekbones. What unites them is the superb clarity of their speech. They, and indeed the entire cast, speak Shakespeare’s verse with profound understanding, measured rhythm, and emotional power. They don’t just act it; they perform it. There’s a difference. In this show, the audience is not merely presented with characters, but guided, clearly, expertly and with immense charm and style, into the world of the play.

It would be repetitive to mention every great performance in this production. The truth is, it’s a team of great actors working together. But just to highlight a few…

Jo Rich as Launce makes the often obscure language of Shakespearean clowns as clear as day, and delivers huge laughs in the process (even without Crab the dog). His double-act with the wonderful Jelani Munroe (as Speed) at the start of the second half, when his milkmaid girlfriend’s list of personality traits are turned into a Hinge profile, is a simply hilarious comedy sketch. And to those who bristle at the use of added modern words to the original text, I can only say that, if dog poo bags had been invented in the 1590s, it's hard to believe that Will Kemp would not have done what Rich does with one in this show.

Lilia Kanu as Julia, and Rosie Mahendra as Silvia, turn these wronged-women roles into pillars of strength. Kanu manages to wrench laughter and sympathy from the audience with the simplest of looks, and Mahendra, at the climax of the play, survives one of Shakespeare’s most troubling and problematic moments of sexual violence with dignity and power.

Alfred Dry as Panthino converts an apparently thankless role into a gloriously lascivious letch. Jake Robertson as the Duke of Milan turns in a showstopping drag act singing a mambo. Saul Bailey as Thurio is the perfect last-man-on-earth-she’d-want-to-marry (although when he turns briefly into a punk-rock act even he looks pretty attractive for a moment). And Leah Aspden as Lucetta somehow wrings every ounce of comedy from her tiffs with her mistress, apparently with no more than a withering smile. This cast, either by design or coincidence, includes no fewer than three classy drag performers in Jake Robertson, Alfie Dry and Saul Bailey, and although Robertson's full-on, bearded song-and-dance number is the centrepiece, it's good to see Dry stretching his wings in the photos of Launce's dating-app milkmaid (my favourite was 'Kate' sitting on a washing machine with the caption 'Mondays am I right?'). And even Bailey gets a moment of sartorial indignation with one of the evening's biggest laughs: 'My "jerkin" is a "doublé"!'

I could go on, but you get the idea. What has clearly happened here is that this group of already highly talented actors have grasped the opportunity of working with Greg Doran, and it has turbocharged their abilities. The fact that five of them are taking their finals on the same days as acting in this play is testament to their dedication (and their tutors' patience). 

There are moments of sublime beauty: Shackleton’s performance of Valentine's sonnet lament for Silvia (‘Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale’) brought me to tears. And there are oodles of great directorial touches that set the tone with style and imagination: the outlaws singing ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ to cheer themselves up (with the location being of course ‘West Verona’), and Milan being established with a Formula One race (Silvia being one of the drivers), were moments of sheer theatrical elan. In the early stages, these set pieces are used to establish a scene, and are then put aside to leave a bare stage with two people talking on it, which feels a trifle formulaic. But by the second half, even that slight issue is forgotten, and the production becomes a seamless unity of ideas and action. 

And behind all the love and laughter, as so often in Shakespeare comedies, is a darkness. Here, at the end of the play, our two gents stroll off arm in arm, oblivious of the enduring harm done to their newly-won wives Silvia and Julia. Although Proteus is the betrayer and near-rapist, Valentine’s readiness to forgive his pal at a moment’s notice implicates him too, and this production leaves us in no doubt about their culpability.

The students may have learned a lot, but Greg Doran has too. Not only was the Hinge app new to him, but the readiness of the cast to discuss aspects of the play and motivations of the characters, to try and understand, if not forgive, behaviours that Doran’s (and my) generation might simply condemn out of hand, came as a surprise to him, and made him reconsider his own approach. After four years here, I still learn from the students every day. It’s one of the great privileges of living in this town. For a newcomer, it must be a wonderful surprise.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona is undoubtedly juvenilia by Shakespeare’s standards. On the page it has moments of casual misogyny. It is peopled by characters who veer into stereotype, and whose motivations are unconvincingly abrupt. But this production manages to turn them into fully rounded human beings. It does it by taking the Alan Moore approach. In Watchmen Alan Moore asked, ‘What would happen if there actually were such things as super-heroes in the real world?’ Here, Doran and his team have asked, ‘What would be the reaction if people actually treated each other like this in the real world?’ The answer makes for pain amid the laughter, as well as a profoundly unsettling ending. I left the Playhouse tonight feeling that I’d been present not just at a wonderful play, but a genuine learning experience: for the students, for Sir Greg Doran, and quite possibly, on this occasion, for Shakespeare himself.