Shakespeare, Trump and the liberal elite collide

There are some things I simultaneously love and loath about London.  On the one hand, it draws in a world of talent, entrepreneurs, creativity, smart ideas and investment capital.  It literally buzzes, zings and pops at its best. 

But is also excludes through its unfettered acceptance of Wonga; building soulless elevated housing estates for millionaires who don’t live here, blighting the riverside, the posher postcodes and the leafy boulevards heading West.  It’s increasingly depressing to wander along the Thames in the heart of the City and gaze up as gilded cages, empty, bought off-plan remain unoccupied, except for a bored front-desk concierge, dreaming of elsewhere.  Here, some of the greatest views in the world are created for the interior designer to briefly enjoy, before they finish, click-off the lights and leave the space devoid of life and love and mess.   

When Sir Christopher Wren rented a house on Bankside (a few yards from the re-built Globe Theatre) he could open the curtains and through the sash see a new Dome come to fruition, topping St Paul’s like the St Peter’s of Rome he had in his minds-eye. Now that beautiful home stands in the gloomy shadow of perversely constructed steel and glass dystopian towers named without irony, NEO; hundreds of apartments and penthouses in four Pavilions, rising in sequence with unparalleled views towards St Paul's.  The nicer flats here cost about £22 million. The ugliness of NEO is only relieved by a nearby 50-storey aberration of sense and taste; an architectural horror called One Blackfriars.  It bulges at its mid-rift like the belly of an avaricious property developer devouring his lunch with the city planner nodding his assent without conscience.

Further West, the re-built iconic chimneys of Battersea Power Station are repainted.  The vast development at least has mixed use in its masterplan (and a new office home for Apple) but, as all South-East Train commuters already know: the trackside Dogs Home contains more of a sense of life and hope than any of the completed mega-apartments.  These are vacuous gloomy spaces, preposterously gold coloured, and already, with a faint smell of deathly regret hanging from their balconies.  Nearby, the new American Embassy will open at Nine Elms, its staff soon navigating the echoing streets of what has been redesigned as the single most soulless neighbourhood in the world.  As the playwright Beckett might have put it: “Nothing comes, nothing goes, this is awful”.   Donald Trump has condemned the place and refused to cut the ribbon.  Even a mad, egotistical, self-anointed Emperor might be worth hearing on this one.  

Heading back East, we stumble upon another new shiny London District bizarrely called More London.  Directly opposite the Tower of London, the Mayor's Offices stand empty in the evening, heroically sustaining the planet by being as perpetually dark as doom and unused for two-thirds of the year.  The hastily landscaped park nearby is cut across with a narrow path from the foot of the extraordinary (and mainly empty Shard) into a new riverside area called Potters Field Park, with stunning views of Tower Bridge. 

And here, beneath yet more empty apartments we finally found life.  And not just life, but creativity that lifted the soul, talent and imagination and wonder, in a new subterranean home by the river. The new Bridge Theatre is a wonderful place. Founded by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr, The Bridge is a new 900-seat auditorium and is the first wholly new theatre of scale to be added to London’s commercial theatre sector in 80 years.  Designed by Haworth Tompkins Architects (winner of the 2014 Stirling Prize) it is a wonderful industrial, yet comfortable and intimate space.  It was heaving as we arrived for a new production of Julius Caesar.  The bar is terrific, with open space and friendly staff.  We headed downstairs, not sure what to expect with a modern staging of an unloved play.  

The production is unlike anything I have ever seen before.  The staging of Shakespeare in the round is not new, but this was built with the technical hydraulics and sound effects of an action movie.  Caesar arrives like Trump at a rally, but with a real rock band playing Seven Nations Army as if it were Corbyn at Glastonbury; the extraordinary cult hero/enemy instantly enthrals and divides, whatever your politics. The crowd on the floor of the theatre are sold hats and t-shirts for the Trump-like Caesar, about the be crowned by Mark Antony (David Morrissey).  It is the liberal elite versus Trump, the Brexiteers versus Remainers but with machine guns and agitators stirring the crowd. 

Brutus (Ben Wishaw) cannot stomach the coronation of this self-serving “god” and stirred by a brilliantly played Cassius (Michelle Fairley, also brilliant as Catelyn Stark in GOT) the conspirators gun him down on an elevated throne and dip their hands in his blood to ensure their treachery is known and celebrated.    Of course, it goes horribly wrong for the conspirators from there on. While we sat a little back from the tumult stunned, some down in the "pit" throng literally fainted amidst the blood, the guns and the spit words of dread and doom.  Powerful. Awesome. Extraordinary.  Life-affirming good and relevant theatre.  

We stumbled out into the deathly quiet streets, with hundreds of others, still buzzing.