The tall, red glow at the entrance to the white building that presides over Aro St is the first hint of something firing inside.

The quaintly formal interior of Philosophy House is an inspired choice of venue. Inside, under a leavening skylight, a large reception room offers a variety of doors and windows for Dodge and Bach to enter and exit. The Persian-style rug laid on the dark blue carpet works first of all to evoke the magical forest where fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania meet in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From then on, they’re on the mat: Dodge and Bach go for the throat of conflict between some of the Bard’s most dangerous men and women.

Dodge transforms herself for her diverse range with a striking generosity to her body contortions and a variety of accents. My favourite is the switch to our own flat vowels for a good, keen Lady Macbeth from the strenuous Spanish inflection of the doomed Katherine of Aragon arguing for her life with Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII, while Dodge’s Kate from The Taming of the Shrew is a scary low-comedy creation that certainly justifies all the disparaging comments made about Kate in the play at large.

The impression – no doubt due to the chemistry these performers enjoy – is that ‘the woman’ is driving each of these scenes, but John Bach is a match for all Dodge’s dames, delivering Oberon, Wolsey, Macbeth, Petruchio and Richard III with a gravity and sensitivity that is ominously powerful.

It is a pleasure to hear Bach’s musical voice sound (live!) up and down its range from the comic lick of falsetto to his trademark bass profundo. Their voices make an electric duet, but it is through their eyes, locked on one another, that the sparks fly. This mechanism makes for a dramatic paradox: an exclusivity is created, sure, but rather than shutting the audience out, it rivets us to the messages we imagine we see zapping between these ‘orbs’.

Then, whereas Dodge frequently visits her gaze on the audience, Bach never does. This seems to give her characters a power or facility beyond his, even beyond the natural sphere, while his remains earthbound or within mortal limits. This tends to suggest a difference between their characters that is impassable, thereby enhancing the potential for destruction. Brilliant!

Bach’s turn as Richard III is a perfect finale for a selection that swoops from the play of fantasy through to moral abjection. Here, Richard attempts to woo the royal widow Anne who is distraught with grief at the murders he has committed. While Bach gives the dark prince a physical deformity that is comparatively subtle, his rendition of moral depravity is thorough. His general insouciance, punctuated by a focus on her that is identical at times to that of an ardent, innocent suitor is masterful – a characterisation which cries out to be reprised in full ASAP!

The intimacy of the traverse staging (only two chairs deep each side) means we enjoy the poetry delivered as easy and unstrained as it is fluid and shot with sense: the kind of delivery that makes you want to stop and rewind for the sheer pleasure of hearing the lines – the metaphor figured again – which is, of course, what happens with the best chops of Shakespeare.

This combo – unified and distinguished by James Dunlop’s period sound design which includes a live musician playing the lute, is a credit to the trio of directors and a special treat in the Shakespearean feast.
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