Review: Venus and Adonis at York Theatre Royal

“…Funny, emotional, and ultimately tragic…”

Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare, York Theatre Royal

By Sean Sable

You want to know what was definitely not on my bingo card this year? An erotic love story with puppets. I mean, I should have seen it coming when I heard I was going to see a production of Shakespeare’s most sensual poem: Venus and Adonis, performed using Bunraku-style puppets. But these things still have a way of taking you by surprise. And that is perhaps one of the best parts of the production—the unexpected way the gentle sway of Venus’ soft leather limbs wrapped around Adonis’ firmer, wooden… er… torso, can draw you in and make you truly invest in the funny, emotional, and ultimately tragic story. And I am going to tell you right now, I absolutely swooned for those two dolls.

Venus & Adonis began with a detour. Back in 1999, touring Japan with the RSC, director Greg Doran wandered into a Bunraku puppet show in Osaka and came away convinced he had found the way to stage a poem that had stumped him for years. He built the result with Islington’s Little Angel Theatre, the puppet house Lyndie Wright co-founded in a derelict temperance hall in 1961, and it first ran in 2004 before a revival in 2017. This year’s revival had the most gloriously mundane of origins: the RSC rang to say a great box of puppets was taking up space, and did he fancy doing something with it before they cleared it out. He did. With seed funding from the Backstage Trust and Mark Pigott aboard as executive producer, the show has travelled the country, including a sold-out run in the Barbican’s Pit, and lands now at York Theatre Royal for two nights.

The poem itself begins as many good love stories do: with a chase. Venus, goddess of love, spots the beautiful young hunter Adonis and falls instantly, ruinously in lust. For the rest of the first half of the story, she tries every trick in the book to seduce a lad who would genuinely rather be out killing things. He is on a boar hunt. She is hunting him. When Adonis’ stallion decides to heed Venus’ words and runs after a beautiful filly, Adonis is left stranded. And oh, no… what is a young lover to do to pass the time? But all is not perfect for our newly-minted couple as Adonis’ obsession with the boar stokes a prophecy of tragedy.

I’m going to be honest here; Simon Russell Beale’s voice could talk me into walking off a ledge. So, I was always primed to be thrilled with the opportunity to hear him speak for a full hour. He is known for his versatile and chameleonic voice, and last night’s iteration was a perfect blend of Brian Blessed’s rich warmth and David Attenborough’s winking curiosity. It was crisp and faintly musical, and always perfectly timed. The razor-close comedic pauses between narration and action made every joke land so hard that I found my cheeks aching from my perma-smile. Then again, I expected nothing less from a performer I would happily listen to as he narrated a crisp packet.

All of the puppets were sumptuous, but Venus was an absolute triumph. She is sculpted from supple leather that gives her a fluttering, weightless bounce that is nothing short of goddess-like in its perfection. Adonis is worked in firmer wood with a mop of springy, youthful curls. I was pleased to see the design never reached for stark realism, which I think is for the best as they never wander into the uncanny valley. Instead, by remaining puppets, you forget they are puppets and quickly descend into the fiction of the moment. Part of the pleasure is watching them do what no human cast could: float effortlessly in the air or gesture in slow motion with a luxuriousness no human limb could achieve.

Five puppeteers in head-to-toe black animate them – Bartolomeo Bartolini, Edie Edmundson, Rachel Leonard, Lee Maeda, and associate director Sarah Wright, often with a single person splitting the footwork of two puppets at once. I can only imagine the sort of drilling Steve Tiplady’s puppetry direction must have demanded to create such a lithe performance in such a tight space. For the most part, they are invisible, but when you do catch them moving around each figure, it is in a slow, fluid huddle that feels like its own intimate pleasure. The puppeteers supply the small sound effects and voices too, which adds a cosy realism to the performance. But it wasn’t all about the human figures. The boar was a wonderful hulking thing that felt both terrifying and delightfully observed.

Beneath all of it, drifts Nick Lee’s guitar. The music had an unhurried classical line that felt a little folkloric at the edges. At times, it brushed up against the twinkling sound of a lute, and at other times, I could swear I heard a little Spanish edge to the plucking style. Occasionally, it was so light that you could feel your muscles unwinding, as if you were listening to a lullaby.

The set, designed by Rob Jones, is a stage within a stage, with a travelling circus-like quality to its tent shape, topped by a globe that rotates later in the performance for a real audience surprise. It is golden in colour, with delicate, fussy details that remind you of a Victorian child’s doll’s house if it were touched by influences of Commedia dell’Arte. A black-draped table sits at the front like an extended apron, and this is where the majority of the play’s action takes place. From the moment Venus arrives, carried in by doves in her conch-shell chariot, I was hooked. As the story progresses, we are treated to some shadow puppetry, including hares bounding away from hounds, and the boar looming large and black against a royal blue forest floor. Vince Herbert and Lauren Watson’s lighting does a lot of hard work, adding depth and layering to such a small space whilst keeping the illusion alive by creating a plane just wide enough to offer scope, but narrow enough to keep the puppeteers out of the frame.

My advice to those thinking about whether to add Venus & Adonis to their bingo card? Go. Bring a date. Bring a lover you found hunting in the woods. Bring whoever you would most like beside you in the warm, swooning dark, and let Venus woo you with her seductive charms.

Venus and Adonis plays at York Theatre Royal until Wednesday 01 July. Tickets are available here.

Sean Sable is a Yorkshire-based freelance writer and editor specialising in Young Adult and Horror fiction, frequently at the same time. When she isn’t buried under a pile of books and manuscripts, she is looking for her keys and having extensive one-sided conversations, in Swedish, with her deaf cat. You can find her online at: www.seansable.co.uk