Byron and Shelley: A Romantics Comedy

Burton Taylor Studio

Tuesday 20th – Saturday 24th October 2009 at 9.30pm

“So did these total strangers entertain me? In short – yes. I have almost enjoyed it more now that I have time to absorb it all. There were delightful verbal wanderings and some wonderful ideas emerged” Olivia Williams ★★★★★

“The play wasn’t about some entirely new or challenging way of looking at the story it sets up to narrate. Rather it uses the story as a pretext and manages to use the characters and situations well for the purposes of an enjoyable, light hearted, improvised comedy.” Abhishek Bhattacharyya ★★★★★

Byron and Shelley: A Romantics Comedy ★★★★★

Review by Olivia Williams

It was with some trepidation that I entered the Burton Taylor for this improvised comedy. In my time, I have attended some stratospherically pretentious, awful plays for the sake of friends who shall, of course, remain nameless. Fortunately this time the wincing was minimal and, as a faceless reviewer, there was no need for me to give the standard, post-performance ego massage.

So did these total strangers entertain me? In short – yes. I have almost enjoyed it more now that I have time to absorb it all. There were delightful verbal wanderings and some wonderful ideas emerged. It seems a shame that they could not be collated into a structured, formal play at some stage. Dr John Polidori was a runaway success, almost managing to upstage Byron and Shelley themselves. He has notable eloquence and his liberal use of lyrical language occasionally made him sound rather more poetic than his literary counterparts. One problem with choosing such erudite characters is that, off the cuff, it is very difficult to create a monologue approaching an imitation of Byron or Shelley’s linguistic flair.

The boatman Maurice could be rather clunky but, as is the nature of improvisation, there are patches of effervescence alongside those lines that transpired to be cul-de-sacs. Maurice was at his darkly comic best when he observed that “people in love often forget to swim”, referring a couple of star-crossed lovers who drowned in the lake. The bathos was perfect.

Byron’s one-liners were often successes; at one point he snaps “I can’t remember every single orphan boy I have exposed to the moors” and his flights of fantasy were witty and worthwhile. Shelley similarly was often highly amusing; particularly when showing obviously prickliness at sharing a profession with his dear friend, choosing to interpret one of Byron’s dreams as an indication that he should clearly give up poetry.

It might have been effective to parody these Romantic figures themselves more often, rather than using them as a backdrop for the surreal plot. They are such obvious targets, with their inherent flamboyance and self-absorption that their pretentions were just asking to be used as the object of lampooning. For a concept of such comic potential, it could have been more fruitfully mined for such material. This was used occasionally to great effect with Byron’s invented story about a Hawk, in which every detail was a tenuous and absurd symbol for something else and in Percy Shelley’s very thinly veiled self-aggrandising tale, the hero of which was one Mercy Shelley.

The beginning was a little wobbly, with some heavy-handed contextualisation in the opening conversation. However, it built up superbly to the climax of Dr Polidori’s cannibalism, after his confusion between moles and men “took a turn for the macabre”. Judging by the feminine cacophony of laughter throughout, the cast must have many dependable friends, or giggling groupies. Either way, that post-performance ego massage is not too difficult to administer – they deserved it.

Byron and Shelley: A Romantics Comedy ★★★★★

Review by Abhishek Bhattacharyya

After a voice, dramatically blurred, announced the location, the characters were introduced to claps of thunder, with lightning illuminating their presence! And the lights could be seen hanging right over their heads. With their posturing, their expressions, the voiceover and the staging within the kind of playhouse Burton Taylor is, they were four really comic freezes that set off the play. But in a way they captured a lot of what went missing from the rest of the play. For one, like in the effect achieved with lightning where one can see lights overhead, there were a lot of specific effects that could have been achieved in such an intimate space. The play didn’t entirely engage with the kind of stage it had. For example (and just as a random example), asides or mutterings in sleep could have been used to good effect. The play also may have benefited much from some creative use of music or more off-stage noise in general. And to bring all that together, the actors may just have used their bodies better to infuse some more energy into the production. Perhaps a single unexpected movement somewhere?

Having said all that, one must draw attention to the quality of the dialogue, which was really enjoyable and engaging. The way in which the play did engage with the stage, and did it very well, was in the way it managed to create this comfortable space where all that conversation could happen. The comic in it wasn’t of the sort that would keep you roaring throughout (though a few people did seem inclined to do that), but of the kind that would keep a winding series of conversations filled with laughs and made worthwhile following. It was only helped by Byron’s unchanging expression, the boatman’s rowing the boat with the motions of a racing boat rower while making wonderful creaking noises with the chair and Polidori’s expressions which in themselves were sufficient to draw a laugh.

The play wasn’t about some entirely new or challenging way of looking at the story it sets up to narrate. Rather it uses the story as a pretext and manages to use the characters and situations well for the purposes of an enjoyable, light hearted, improvised comedy. The subject also allows for a lot of talk of writing and the play exploits the comic potential of such conversations rather glibly. On the whole, if you are a student of literature filled with such talk and with authorised versions of stories and events, do drop in. The play has enough to offer not only in terms of making light subjects of such grave discussion, but also in making talking of it, from the ‘greatest poet of our generation’, worth listening to. If you aren’t another of those people who have turned most literature boring by studying it, do turn up still. It may be helpful not to look for what ‘really’ happened, nor a real parody of what did; but you will enjoy the hour long break, sinking into some amusing, well organised conversation. And perhaps (fingers crossed), with people who can improvise scenes and dialogue so fast that they make you wonder whether they were just lucky with their suggestion, you’ll get a much better play by the time you get to it!