The Upcoming
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Cinema
      • Movie reviews
      • Film festivals
    • Food & Drinks
      • News & Features
      • Restaurant & bar reviews
      • Interviews & Recipes
    • Literature
    • Music
      • Live music
    • Theatre
    • Shows & On demand
  • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
  • What’s On
    • Art exhibitions
    • Theatre shows
  • Tickets
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Special events
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureTheatre

The Anatomy of Melancholy at the Ovalhouse

The Anatomy of Melancholy at the Ovalhouse | Theatre review
28 November 2013
Guy de Vito
Guy de Vito
Avatar
Guy de Vito
28 November 2013

One of the most peculiar books ever written in the English language has found an unlikely home in the Ovalhouse, Kennington. Robert Burton’s 1621 treatise has been adapted for the stage in a production that channels a recondite and complex examination of depression, its causes and its cures – all from a Jacobean perspective.

The play is set in Burton’s Oxford study, presenting the scholarly vicar apparently rehearsing for a stage adaptation of his text. Burton, studiously played by Gerard Bell, bumbles around a set that looks to have been inspired by Holbein’s The Ambassadors, as he fires out quotations upon the subject of melancholy. Three of his students contribute, helping to translate his classical dictum by holding up sheets of simple English translations. Easels cover every corner of the stage, each holding a large book. The audience is guided through the various particles, segments and chapters as the pages are turned – almost like the cogs of an antique clock.

The Elizabethans and Jacobeans were largely strange and quirky people; they had great interest in cosmology, astrology, alchemy and mysticism. Their Christian piety, though still strong, was melded with a revival in pagan superstition – James I wrote a ‘witch hunting’ handbook entitled Daemonologie and Ben Jonson wrote a play set in hell called The Devil Is an Ass. Furthermore, around this time the first English colony was established (Jamestown, Virginia) and the Renaissance, which had started three centuries earlier in Italy, finally reached Britain.

The years between 1558 and 1625 are therefore definitive in terms of British history and thus completely fascinating. The scholarship of Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy is surely analogous of this fact. However, despite the recent revival of interest in the period, the stage adaptation of this early enchiridion on psychology is at times torturous to watch.

It is a brave Londoner who, after a long days work, will choose to sit through this three-hour production of dense, archaic academia. Frankly, metaphysics on a Tuesday night – or indeed any night – just doesn’t quite hit the spot and its highfalutin esotericism will alienate most. It is not without merit; it is well-acted and many of the stage gambits work quite well – it even has a slapstick element à la Noises Off (the seventeenth century version). Ultimately though, this can only be recommended to the most cerebral scholars of Psychology and English Literature.

Guy de Vito

The Anatomy of Melancholy is on at the Ovalhouse until 30th November 2013. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.

Watch a trailer for the production here: 

Related Itemsreview

More in Theatre

A Livestream with David Bedella at Crazy Coqs Online

★★★★★
Regan Harle
Read More

Undercover at Morpheus Show Online

★★★★★
Michael Higgs
Read More

Playing ON: An interview with Jim Pope on life-changing theatre

Georgia Howlett
Read More

Sunset Boulevard at Curve Theatre Online

★★★★★
Selina Begum
Read More

Hip Hop Cinderella

★★★★★
Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Theatre in 2020: a recap (and an outlook for 2021)

Michael Higgs
Read More

A new world of theatre: Aimie Atkinson on groundbreaking theatre platform Thespie

Ezelle Alblas
Read More

Dick Whittington at the National Theatre

★★★★★
Samuel Nicholls
Read More

Living Newspaper: A Counter Narrative – Edition Two at the Royal Court Theatre

★★★★★
James Humphrey
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Outside the Wire
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • Undercover at Morpheus Show Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • A Livestream with David Bedella at Crazy Coqs Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Blithe Spirit
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • You Me at Six – Suckapunch
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • WandaVision: Marvel’s charming sitcom proves an astounding success
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • Sleaford Mods – Spare Ribs
    ★★★★★
    Album review
  • The Queen’s Gambit: A chess story that’s not about the moves but the motives
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • Away
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • Imperial Blue
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • WandaVision: Marvel’s charming sitcom proves an astounding success
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • The Queen’s Gambit: A chess story that’s not about the moves but the motives
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
  • Undercover at Morpheus Show Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Ten short literary collections to get you back into reading
    Literature
  • Mayor
    ★★★★★
    Cinema
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play at St. James Theatre | Theatre review
ARTiculate exhibition and auction at Victoria Miro with Danny Boyle