Link: Henry V

My latest for Litro Magazine is about three productions of Henry V, including DruidShakespeare and the Unicorn Theatre's adaptation for young audiences.

Review: As You Like It

The Lady Parts blog recently posted a casting notice for Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It which described her like so: "a saucy, sexy heroine who saves herself (and others) all while getting her man."

....well, it's not wrong? "Saucy" is indeed a word Rosalind uses to describe her intended behavior when she is in disguise as the shepherd boy Ganymede. Sexy... well, her lover Orlando thinks so, though in his self-centered, Petrarchan rhapsodies, he probably wouldn't use exactly that term. But the only thing Rosalind can really be said to save anyone from is sexual frustration: the real danger lurks outside of the Forest of Arden where she, in her own words again 'proves a busy actor' in both the pursuit of her own desires and others'. She does get her man, though. But only after teaching him how to deserve her. 

That dangerous outer world where the play begins-- the dual courts of Duke Frederick, who exiled his brother, Rosalind's father; and that of Oliver de Boys, who has robbed his youngest brother Orlando of his inheritance-- seems best characterized in the Globe's current production by irrational hate. Oliver (William Mannering) confesses that he has no idea why he hates his brother so much, and Duke Frederick refuses to give his reasons for suddenly banishing Rosalind under pain of death. Orlando (Simon Harrison) brings traces of this fury and violence with him into the forest when he flees there, only to be quickly and easily pacified by the exiled Duke (David Beames, who also plays Frederick) and brought over to placid country living, where the only intrigues are romantic and the only violence done to deer. 

On the other hand is Rosalind, who is also forced to flee to save her life, and decides to do so disguised as a boy. I don't know exactly how to describe what Michelle Terry does except to say that it is wholly winning. Her Rosalind shrieks and shouts and flails and makes faces and is dazzlingly clever yet utterly gobsmacked by her feelings for Orlando. It's thrilling to watch a woman onstage behave with such inhibition, and for that behavior to be framed as joyfully funny, not as laughable and worthy of mockery. And Terry's Rosalind does not derive this inhibition from her masculine guise-- it is what characterizes her private games with her cousin Celia (Ellie Piercy, equally charming). Living as Ganymede simply allows her to bring all her exuberant weirdness out in public. Rosalind and Celia are perhaps Shakespeare's greatest female friendship (the field of competition isn't large), and director Blanche McIntyre's greatest strength there and throughout the play (and one she also demonstrated in The Comedy of Errors) is perhaps her ability to recognize that comic characters can be absurd and human simultaneously. 

Another sterling example of this is James Garnon's Jaques, melancholic follower of the exiled duke. I frankly tend to find Jaques insufferable, but Garnon's depiction transformed my understanding. Rather than playing up the character's pomposity and protestations of melancholy, his understated performance suggests something profoundly truthful about Jaques sadness, while avoiding the kind of hyper-naturalistic performance that does not work particularly well with classical texts in general, but especially not at the Globe. Oh, and he's funny, too, and finds what seemed to me at least to be a genuinely original spin on the classic 'All the world's a stage...' speech.

In a strange way, though, As You Like It could be Shakespeare's most naturalistic play. Nothing much happens; the events are mostly structured around watching different characters encounter each other and just seeing what comes of it. It's a testament to McIntyre's skill that even so, the play never feels shapeless and the pace always seems brisk. It's a delightful play about people finding themselves and each other; thankfully, this production doesn't try to turn it into something more by making it Dark and Serious. Its ethos is perhaps best expressed (as so many things are) by Rosalind herself: "I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad." As the first half of the play makes plain, such experiences cannot always be avoided... but As You Like It is more in the business of merrymaking. 

Link/Review: Titus Andronicus

Another review for Litro, this time of Smooth-Faced Gentlemen's all-lady Titus Andronicus.

Review: Romeo and Juliet

I'll just put this out there right up front: I'd never seen a good, live production of Romeo and Juliet. (Well, okay, one caveat: I saw it at OSF in I think 2007? And I remember that I liked the production, but I genuinely can't remember a thing about it except the costumes. I also saw an hour-long, four person version, but that's not quite the same. If I've seen other good ones, I can't remember them.) I absolutely adore the play, but I forget that fact sometimes because it is being constantly misinterpreted and misrepresented.

So I'm pretty thrilled to have finally seen a truly lovely, moving Romeo and Juliet. 

All the previous productions have had myriad problems, but the most utterly lethal one, every time, has been the Juliet. Time after time, directors seem to forget that Juliet is required to carry essentially the entirety of act four and most of act five by herself, and cast wispy, pretty actresses who can float around a balcony but are incapable of presenting (and, I suspect, even recognizing) Juliet's intelligence and the steely resolve which drives her through the latter half of the play. 

Basically what I'm saying is, thank God for Cassie Layton. Her artlessly youthful, awkward, practical Juliet anchors the play, and Layton carries Juliet from giddy confusion at her first encounter with Romeo (she doesn't quite know what's going on, but she knows she like it) through a subtle, gradual maturation to laughingly, and convincingly declaring to the Friar, "Talk not of fear." Her eroding innocence and complete self-assurance make it impossible to dismiss her suicide as stupid youthful impulsiveness: both she and Samuel Valentine's Romeo carry so entirely the weight of their circumstances it is wholly possible to believe that they are left with no other choice. Romeo's lament that he has "stain'd the childhood of our joy with blood" rang particularly strikingly-- they begin as innocents, but they do not end that way. 

Co-directors Dominic Dromgoole and Tim Hoare overlap and intercut scenes, drawing extra attention to the language of fate and foreboding that pervades the play, and highlighting the repetitions of language and imagery across successive scenes. The stylized opening chorus and the very well-carried final speeches by the parents and the friar (usually interminable if they aren't cut, here feeling vital and weighty) remind us that this is in fact a civic tragedy: the original sin that must be punished is the intolerance and hate-mongering of the parents, not their children's daring to love each other. 

Valentine (that's his name, I swear) imbues Romeo's self-centered dreaminess with an endearing sweetness, and a willingness to love that's not just limited to Juliet and the unseen Rosaline: he's warm and affectionate with his friends and mentors (Tom Kanji as Benvolio and the Friar and Steffan Donnelly as Mercutio) and seems genuinely open to reconciling with Tybalt, though the latter (Matt Doherty) will have none of it. This Romeo's earnest efforts to avoid violence, both with Tybalt and Paris, added an additional dimension to his near-catatonic grief at the news of his banishment: he mourns the thought of losing Juliet, certainly, but that crazed edge to his torment certainly seems to be equally borne of guilt and horror at what he has done. 

The balcony scene is suffused with genuine joy and wonder, and Dromgoole and Hoare are unafraid not only to allow the first three acts to be lighthearted, but don't try to erase the comic moments written even into the latest scenes. Kanji and Donnelly's drunken wanderings as Benvolio and Mercutio are very charming, and Lord Capulet (Steven Elder) emerges as surprisingly funny. He is flanked by Hannah McPake's steely Lady Capulet and Sarah Higgins's completely delightful Nurse, both of whom prove cannier than their sex and station allow them to openly appear. They do what Juliet cannot: push aside their own desires, lower their eyes, and surrender, after some resistance, to Lord Capulet's demands. No wonder he is so willing to believe in Juliet's sudden reformation. 

Atmospheric music contributes to the stylized tone, and the acts are bookended with a relatively lighthearted musical number featuring the company as the band, plus a very charming jig that frankly comes as a relief after the devastating final scene in the Capulet tomb. Dromgoole, as ever, knows exactly how to tread the line between a contemporary audience's naturalistic expectations and the presentational, theatrical nature of Shakespeare's actual writing. Elevating the material in this way, rather than making it stagey and artificial, grants permission to believe in everything: of course Romeo and Juliet are perfect for each other, of course it's true love, it's right there in the poetry.

Link/Review: Golem

This is my first contribution to the super awesome Litro Magazine: a review of 1927's new play Golem at Trafalgar Studios. 

Link/Essay: Dueling and Romeo and Juliet

Here's a post I wrote for Shakespeare's Globe's blog about Romeo and Juliet and the Elizabethan culture of street violence!

Review: The Merchant of Venice

How do you solve a problem like Shylock? The British theatre scene is going to take several cracks at the question this season: the Almeida's production of The Merchant of Venice ran this winter, and both Shakespeare's Globe and the Royal Shakespeare Company are presenting it this summer. I saw the Globe's version first, and their answer to that question is compelling and simple: cast Jonathan Pryce. 

One of the reasons I hate labels like 'romance' or 'problem play' or 'late comedy' is because they imply a chronological progression of Shakespeare's work that simply doesn't exist. The Merchant of Venice was probably written in the mid 1590s, but this early comedy shares all the troubling aspects that supposedly characterize 'late comedies' like Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well. The relatively straightforward comic story of the debt-ridden gentleman Bassanio's attempts to woo a wealthy heiress, Portia, can hardly hold up an air of levity when laid against the story of the Venetian merchant Antonio, whose 'joking' bond of a pound of his own flesh against 3000 ducats takes a turn when Antonio defaults on the debt and the Jewish moneylender Shylock becomes determined to claim his bond.

Director Jonathan Munby creates a convincingly dangerous Venice, filled with drunken, thoughtless aristocrats whose revels-- as we see in an extended masquerade sequence at the beginning of the play-- are capable of seamlessly devolving into anti-Semitic violence. Dominic Mafham's apparently mild-mannered Antonio, pining away with unrequited love for Daniel Lapaine's particularly dense Bassanio, displays virulent bigotry against Shylock. Its suddenness and violence, combined with the sharp, charming intelligence of Pryce's asides, weights the play at once in Shylock's favor without falling into either of the most dangerous traps: turning him into a comic caricature, or portraying him as a nebbish victim whose later retaliatory violence seems to have no cause. 

Despite his many early asides, Pryce's Shylock is ultimately opaque: when he says the bond will only be a joke, and laughingly insists to Bassanio that he would gain nothing by actually claiming Antonio's flesh, it is unclear if he is setting up a long game, or really intends to make peace. Either way, the elopement of his daughter Jessica with Antonio and Bassanio's friend Lorenzo becomes an essential hinge, granted particular weight in this production by allowing the love between Jessica and Lorenzo to be genuine rather than, as is so often the case, cynical and bleak. Ben Lamb plays Lorenzo as staunchly well-meaning, though increasingly aware that there are more differences than he expected between himself and his canny, converted wife. Phoebe Pryce (surely an awkward role to be playing opposite your actual father) is an active presence even in silence: her Jessica is always watching, and unlike so many portrayals, she rejects an overly simplistic understanding of Jessica's situation. Ms. Pryce not only seems to understand, but is able to wonderfully subtly depict Jessica's simultaneous love for Lorenzo, confusion and isolation in her new culture, dislike for her father's repressive household, and affection for the man himself. 

The richness and depth of the Pryces' characterizations makes it difficult for the Portia and Bassanio's half of the story to rebalance the scales, though some of the wittier secondary characters-- Gratiano (David Sturzaker), Nerissa (Dorothea Myer-Bennett), and the clown Lancelot Gobbo (Stefan Adegbola) in particular-- really shine. 

It seems fairly obvious that the sudden and alarming rise of anti-Semitic violence in Europe is why everyone has decided to put on The Merchant of Venice this year, though none of the theatres in question have actually said so thus far. But the questions this production-- and particularly its trial scene-- raised for me were about power more broadly. The horror of the trial, for me, lay in the ease with which the law was turned against Shylock. We witness the full power of the state come bearing down on him, and the glee with which Portia, Antonio, and the Duke of Venice himself see it happen. They will do anything to turn the law against him. 

The margins of The Merchant of Venice seethe with otherness: a Moroccan prince, a 'Moorish' maid servant, Portia's complaints about suitors who cannot speak Italian-- even Adegbola's increasingly cheerfully rebellious Lancelot, as an emissary from the lower class, contributes to the continual battering of the facade of homogeneity that the rich, white, Christian central characters seem so determined to preserve. While this production only faintly raises the specter of this power, perhaps that is correct: it shifts on the sides and underneath. Shylock can only impotently rage at the society that oppresses him, that steals his daughter from him-- and against this backdrop, is vicious vengeance is rendered, if not good, certainly not nonsensical.