#shakespare

Macbeth (2001) at Shakespeare's Globe

"Although we see some adjustments to staple costume [...] the cast almost without exception remains dressed in uniform formalwear. The exception is actress Eve Best. Initially wearing ensemble livery, from 1.5 onward her Lady Macbeth appears in a silvery sleek silk gown, suspended by spaghetti straps from bare shoulders. Her svelte appearance proved worth a wolf-whistle from a groundling at least one performance. Her presence was such a visual anomaly as to summon attention; she did not remain onstage as much as others. [...] In the 'sleepwalking scene' (5.1), Lady Macbeth enters carrying not a candle but a bucket. The poignant moments of 'Out, damned spot' (5.1.33f) are played with the mad Lady kneeling beside the bucket. [...] [...] this time Lady Macbeth holds an infant (a lump of napkins) that she delivers to Macbeth in a powerfully strange extension of making Lady Macbeth voice of the prophecies. [...] After the departure of guests from the banquet in 3.4, Macbeth lies down (as if 'to sleep') upon the floating black table and the Lady reclines beneath it (and him), as they consider how steeped in blood but 'young in deed' they are (the intermission follows). [...] In 5.1, the sleepwalking Lady steps upon [the slab] to walk up an incline that alternates slant as she labors right and up, then left and up. The surface levers as she kneels to speak 'Out, out,' but the unit continues to sway. [...]

— Nelsen, Paul. Macbeth, by The Red Company and Tim Carroll. Shakespeare Bulletin 20, no. 1 (2002): 15–18.

"The restored Globe Theatre in London continues to have the best spoken and worst directed Shakespeare company in the world. Artistic Director Mark Rylance's decision to have a speech expert, or 'Master of Verse,' for each production has given us verse speaking that is clear, vigorously rhythmic, and nuanced. Although the actors are mostly unknowns, their speech is poetic in the best sense, never fluty or artificial, but natural, coming from within the characters themselves, as if we were hearing a troupe of native speakers from the Land of Blank Verse. [...] Giles Block [...] coached the Macbeth actors so well, so that all had the immaculate speech typical at the Globe. Jasper Britton as Macbeth, and Eve Best too, sometimes came up with the strange phrasing ('He hath honored me... of late / And I have bought... golden opinions...'), plugging in caesuras where none belong, but they were always clear and rhythmic.

— Hornby, Richard. "Shakespearean Iconography." The Hudson Review 54, no. 4 (2002): 657–63.

"In the middle of all this stylization, Jasper Britton and Eve Best played the Macbeths as a surprisingly credible modern couple. [...] In this kind of production the terrifying thing about Macbeth is that he is a believable person in an unbelievable world. The same was true of his wife, no battleaxe but someone who depended on her husband for reassurance and who was seen nervously patting her hair before coming forward to greet Duncan. Far from being a steadying influence, she forced him to calm down in order to calm her down (often by holding her hands). She even sought reassurance from the audience, gently holding a spectator's hand as she confessed, 'Naught's had, all's spent." This moment has a touching echo in the sleepwalking scene, which was played on the swaying platform. On 'Give me your hand,' she reached out toward an imaginary helper and seemed, for a terrifying moment, about to fall off her perch when she found no one there."

— Potter, Lois. "The 2001 Globe Season: Celts and Greenery." Shakespeare Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2002): 95–105.

"[...] Tim Carroll's Lady Macbeth was Eve Best, who gave a disciplined and dramatically focused performance that reached its highpoint in the sleep-walking scene. That scene was largely played on the wire-hung surface, which tilted from end to end as she spoke and moved. Nevertheless, I was struck by Ms. Best's effective acting, rather than by her curious 'stage.' However, I was also struck—as I am in reading Shakespeare's great script—by the frustrating inadequacy of Lady Macbeth's part: it is simply too brief, too incomplete, to be satisfying. [...] After the performance, when I spoke with her briefly about the role, Ms. Best told me of her desire to speak more of Lady Macbeth's inner life than her lines allowed. Indeed, she said that sometimes she was almost in tears when she exited, because she carried away with her so much that remained unsaid. Unless the play is performed in some carefully augmented version, however, that frustration must remain for any actress tackling the part."

— Muinzer, Louis. "The 2001 Season at Shakespeare's Globe, London," Western European Stages 14, no. 1 (2002): 61-64, 79.

The Coast of Utopia (2002) at the National Theatre

"Eve Best was outstanding in three important roles and many other actors doubled—a great tribute to the National Theatre Company but momentarily puzzling at times."

— King, Robert L. "Stoppard's Trilogy, Churchill's Future, Ireland's Past.” The North American Review 288, no. 3/4 (2003): 71–75.

"Eve Best turns in a wonderful performance in all three of her parts: as one of Bakunin's sisters in Voyage, as Herzen's wife (innocently advocating free love and open marriages), and finally as Malwida, the tough and manipulative German governess who takes care of Herzen's family in Salvage."

— Wohl, David. The Coast of Utopia, by Tom Stoppard. Theatre Journal 55, no. 2 (2003): 348–52.

"At the National Theatre, this doubling was augmented by the casting of the strong actor Eve Best as Liubov in Voyage, Natalie in Shipwreck, and Malwida in Salvage. Here Best projected a spectrum from destructive romanticism to responsible practicality. [...]

— Yacowar, Maurice. "Just a Moment in Stoppard's Utopia." Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 18, no. 1 (fall 2003): 77-84.

"[...] The adjectives chosen by these critics suggest that they viewed passion, force, and energetic motion as the necessary attributes of a successful performance in Utopia. If the play lacked linearity and a sense of progress, the production has to supply them. A close look at the two performances that garnered the most univocal critical praise confirms the truth of this observation. [...] and Eve Best (triple-cast as Liubov Bakunin, Natalie Herzen, and Malwida von Meysenburg) were showered with superlatives, summarized in Brook Stow's assertion that Nunn's 'large and uniformly stellar cast [was led by [... and by] the formidable Eve Best.' The descriptors applied to their characterizations suggest the parallel sources of this approbation. [...] They applauded Best as an 'emotional powerhouse' (Brantley), admiring particularly her portrait of Natalie Herzen as a woman 'in a perpetual state of exaltation' (Edwardes). Clearly, reviewers remembered the exceptional physical and emotional intensity these actors brought to their roles. My own strongest memories of multiple viewings of the Utopia trilogy (both onstage and on video at the National Theatre archives) are of the ardent struggle for forward motion that distinguished [...] and Best's performances. [...] Best's performance as Natalie Herzen also gave physical expression to the struggle between forward motion and the forces that limit it. Her first movement in Shipwreck was a stretch of boredom as she complained of 'certain moments... situations... which keep having their turn again' (4). But soon she entered the perpetual state of exaltation described by Edwardes: throwing herself boisterously into Herzen's arms on his first entrance; running enthusiastically about the stage as she celebrated the arrival of the 1848 revolutions in Paris; throwing her clothes off and casting her arms ecstatically open to her lover's embrace. The overall impression was of a woman desperately straining against stasis. Yet, [...] disaster eventually brought Best's Natalie to a shuddering halt. Few who saw the trilogy onstage will forget her anguished reaction to the news of her son's death; the fury with which she executed Stoppard's stage direction, 'Natalie fights out of [Herzen's] embrace and pummels him' (Shipwreck 98); or her final, despairing run downstage as she cried, 'Kolya! No, Kolya!' (Coast, Archive). The production promptbook notes that at this point, 'Nt [Natalie] runs forward DSC [downstage center] and collapses (on revolve) in H[erzen]'s arms' (see also Stoppard, Shipwreck 99). Onstage, Herzen seemed actually to stop Natalie from casting herself into the audience. As she crumpled in his embrace, the perpetual motion machine she had been wound down forever. [...] Best was cast in a manner that explicitly linked her roles together. As Clapp wrote, she played 'a series of on-the-lookout, bound-to-be-defeated women.' By casting her as both Liubov Bakunin and Natalie Herzen, Nunn emphasized the parallels between their tragic stories and increased the sense of a recurring cycle of female frustration. Best's reappearances in these plays could even be read as symbolizing the return of the Eternal Feminine to the lives of the play's men. In this context, her final manifestation as the self-determined survivor Malwida could be seen as Nunn's way of pointing out some change in the status of women over the course of the trilogy. [...]"

— Barker, Roberta. "The Circle Game: Gender, Time, and 'Revolution' in Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia." Modern Drama 48, no. 4 (winter 2005): 706-25.

Mourning Becomes Electra (2003-4) at the National Theatre

"The production team was a powerful one, with an impressive cast headed by two of the leading figures in London theater, Helen Mirren and Tim Piggot-Smith as Christine and Ezra Mannon with, in the central role of Lavinia, Eve Best, who burst onto the London scene in 1999 with a brilliant 'Tis Pity She's a Whore at the Young Vic, and who has since become one of the National's most honored younger actresses. [...] Both Mirren and Best also do fairly well [with the American accent], although neither of them seem quite sure what to do with either "r's" or final "g's", and in fact attempt a fairly wide variety of alternatives. [...] Hilton's difficulty with his accent was by no means his only problem. Taking strongly the often repeated references to Orin's childishness, weakness, and instability, he presented almost from the outset a character so internally disturbed, unpleasant, and erratic that he soon exhausted any sympathy or patience the audience may have had. This essentially left Best to carry the last half of the play alone, with little help from the crushingly bland Peter (Dominic Rowan) and Hazel (Rebecca Johnson). [...]"

— Carlson, Marvin. Mourning Becomes Electra, by Howard Davies. The Eugene O'Neill Review 26 (2004): 267–70.

"Neither Mirren nor the rest of the cast pull back from O'Neill's most melodramatic moments, risking audience guffaws in order to commit to the actions these characters take against one another and in spite of themselves. The center of the trilogy is Lavinia, here intelligently and boldly played by Eve Best with an increasing sense of doom infecting every discovery she makes about herself."

— O'Neill, Michael C. Mourning Becomes Electra; The Pillowman, by Eugene O'Neill, Howard Davies, Martin McDonagh, and John Crowley. Theatre Journal 56, no. 4 (2004): 688–91.

"Best's Lavinia is a performance of notable strength, exceeding expectations, and distinguished by its striking emotional and psychological range. The portrayal is at once mercurial and majestic, moving with a restless intensity that feels both cathartic and unsettling. [...] A figure of magnetic force emerges, whose presence challenges the audience in ways that are as demanding as they are rewarding. [...] Her most formidable task, however, is not to meet the standards set by Piggott-Smith and Mirren, but to bear the weight of this vast and exacting play, often without sufficient support from her co-stars. She manages that. [...] Embracing a performance mode that privileges expressionism without leaving realism behind, she allows Lavinia to be something at once damaged and strangely sanctified—a figure whose beauty is inseparable from her tragic ruin. We are left wondering whether Lavinia is truly at a loss, or whether that ruin is a blessing."

— My grandmother, Ph.D. (Fwiw, she published before Professor Carlson)

As You Like It (2007) at the Crucible Theatre

"It is possible that West intended to use this fairy-tale character as a reference to Freudian concepts: the production had a strong theme of the ambiguity of sexuality and gender running through it. Although Eve Best's Rosalind dressed as a boy she remained very feminine-looking, but was not out of place as the forest was already full of gender-bending [...] The swapping of gender roles was seen most fully at the conclusion in the weddings: Rosalind returned to the stage having simply removed her male cap, letting her hair down and wearing a wedding veil which Orlando then swapped with her while she took his hat. This swapping of items which characterized not only the characters but their gender roles was then copied by all the couples. It was not clear, however, how this would relate to the return to the court as the characters finally exited as actors, not characters: each removed a symbol of their character (Rosalind's cap, Duke Senior's sandals) and placed it centre stage before they all walked to the rear of the stage. Best returned to stop Corin sweeping the characters' items up and performed her, rather than Rosalind's, epilogue. This production contained some strong performances: Best was a playful, intelligent Rosalind with particularly engaging facial expressions which the audience responded very kindly to. [...]"