Abstract
The 2015 season’s Stratford Festival Shakespearean offerings are each problematic in one form or another: Love’s Labour’s Lost is notoriously esoteric with a perplexingly tragic ending; The Taming of the Shrew has generated feminist backlash; Pericles, one might argue, is a co-authored play, thus not entirely Shakespeare’s; and Hamlet is so iconic that fresh, genuine stagings are difficult. Perhaps to combat these obstacles the directors have chosen aesthetically conservative representations. Nevertheless, there are textually motivated moments of brilliance throughout, and each production successfully accentuates the humour between the lines.
Like its big-ticket counterpart Hamlet, the lesser-renowned Love’s Labour’s Lost is a play infiltrated with secrecy, spying, eavesdropping, the invasion of privacy and hypocrisy, whilst incorporating an overarching wit and elegance. This vertiginous ‘civil war of wits’ (2.1.225) with its gossamer insubstantiality might prove intimidating to audiences and actors alike; however, director John Caird’s production diverted and delighted.
The mellow, leafy set of greens, golds and old stone evoked an Oxonian quadrangle complete with chirping birds – an appropriate backdrop for Caird’s youthful, academic, robe-clad quartet of Navarre (Sanjay Talwar), Longaville (Andrew Robinson), Dumaine (Thomas Olajide) and Berowne (Mike Shara); the pedantic Holofernes (Tom Rooney); and the palaverous Don Armado (Juan Chioran). Unfortunately, designer Patrick Clark’s aesthetic seemed to lack originality somewhat, as the 2008 Stratford Festival production, directed by Michael Langham and Richard Monette, bore a similar Elizabethan design. The play’s Latin fragments, outmoded quips, and Lylian symmetry and stylizations might have inclined Caird and Clark towards a traditional presentation; however, a fresh conceptualization would have been more engaging, such as Christopher Luscombe’s pre-WWI version for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), in 2014–15 (see Peter J. Smith’s review, Cahiers Élisabéthains 88, 182–4).
Regrettably, the cavernous Festival Theatre absorbed many of the male speakers’ lines, a fact about which audience members remarked during the interval and – in the case of one particularly vocal viewer – during the performance. The volume issue was most noticeable in Talwar, Shara, Robinson, Olajide and Brian Tree (Nathaniel). Furthermore, the opening music levels drowned out Talwar, and a timing error either onstage or off produced a tolling bell during his opening speech. Fortunately, the female actors were all pleasantly audible and delivered their lines sleekly and playfully. Brad Rudy (Dull) projected beautifully, whilst the production’s only child actor, Gabriel Long (Moth), was miked, thus audible as well. For a play so heavily imbued with labyrinthine wordplay, this issue of ‘levels’ is especially relevant.
The production suffered from occasionally inefficient comic timing. Many jokes were lost due to hasty delivery. The fabulously ruffly Boyet (John Kirkpatrick), for instance, missed the opportunity to milk the ‘came, s[aw], and overcame’ (4.3.68) speech’s sexual innuendoes, though his wig loss at Rosaline’s (Sarah Afful) hands was quite amusing.
The delicious turning point of the play – the eavesdropping scene – lacked believability due to the blocking and set. Actors wandered onstage simultaneously and did not seem particularly concerned about hiding; the ‘concealing’ props’ miniscule proportions may have been intended to provoke laughter but stretched credibility.
Nevertheless, the actors’ unique deliveries at this point were diverting. On saying ‘then thou wilt keep / My tears for glasses’ (4.3.4–5), Talwar created a physical pun by removing his spectacles; Robinson inserted several ‘dip snaps’, gestures from urban youth culture, into his soliloquy; and Olajide erupted into impressive acrobatics, reflective of those he demonstrates as Voltemand in this season’s Hamlet. Talwar’s spectacles nicely mirrored Ruby Joy’s (the French Princess) and suited his scholarly character. Whilst Robinson’s gestures were anachronistic, they could appeal to and connect with younger viewers. Olajide was clearly the physical comedian of the foursome, lingering in the ‘group hug’ to discomfort. Shara played the smug observer, until a sly Jaquenetta (Jennifer Mogbock) exposed his hypocrisy.
Although the women dominated the stage – Mogbock’s subtlety was particularly effective – Shara, Chioran and a few others also offered excellent performances. Shara’s insinuations, gestures, and escalations, especially in the ‘I love, I sue, I seek a wife’ (3.1.174) soliloquy, captured the craftiness of ‘the merry madcap lord’ (2.1.214); whilst Chioran’s delightfully bombastic Don Armado, furnished with gravity-defying frizzled hairstyle and moustache, lisped ‘piss’ for ‘peace’ and serenaded convincingly in Spanish. The harmonies and choral work were impressive, as was young Long’s singing and dancing. Understudy Josh Johnston as Costard emphasized the scatological in his purgation jests with Long, and his smirched face conformed to his character. The actresses offered effortless performances, swishing across the stage with ease and flair.
The production’s cleverest movement was its re-inscription of racial politics. Navarre’s description of Rosaline as ‘black as ebony’ (4.3.243) and subsequent associations of black with ‘the badge of hell’ (250) and the ‘hue of dungeons’ (251) read as highly racist, as does Dumaine’s declaration that ‘Jove would swear / Juno but an Ethiop were’ (113–4) compared with Maria (Ijeoma Emesowum). However, in casting black actresses as four of the five play’s female love interests – Rosaline, Maria, Katherina (Tiffany Claire Martin) and Jaquenetta – and Dumaine himself as black, Caird deflates and mitigates these problematic comments to some degree. His Rosaline is indeed ‘black as ebony’, and Dumaine’s remark aligning Juno with ‘an Ethiop’ loses its vituperation when both he and Maria are black.
Despite its apparent unoriginality in design and its technical impairments, Caird’s Love’s Labour’s emerged as lively and visually satisfying. The boisterous and engaged audience reaction denoted the production’s successful rejuvenation of this cryptic classic.
Much earthier than the ethereal Love’s Labour’s Lost, Chris Abraham’s The Taming of the Shrew was this season’s most raucous and irreverent production. It melded contemporary sensibilities with Elizabethan dress, resulting in a fresh, funny, student-friendly reimagining of the play that coaxed out the inherent proto-feminism in Shakespeare’s writing.
The production suffered from its (self-conscious) overindulgence in preshow activities. The first of three preshow segments featured actors dancing, trying on clothing from a centralized rack, brushing their teeth and interacting with audience members, reminiscent of Michael Fentiman’s First Encounter: The Taming of the Shrew (RSC, 2014), designed for children. Tom Rooney then introduced himself, boasting that it was his ‘first time wearing pumpkin pants!’ – Renaissance breeches. He delivered a brief lecture regarding themes of costume and disguise, perception, preoccupation with gender and identity, and courtship as a kind of performance. Next, a female musician began the madrigal ‘A Virgin’s Meditation’, only to be interrupted by belligerent patron Christopher Sly (Ben Carlson). Whilst the conceit of staging an impromptu audience revolt is diverting, the material prompting the revolt seemed unnecessary and patronizing. Sly’s exasperated ‘Sorry, but how many prologues do you need?’ carried weight.
Nevertheless, the modernized induction beginning at Carlson’s outburst brilliantly integrated original practices of clowning and improvization with contemporary phenomena. Carlson claimed to be ‘a theatre blogger’, irate with this performance’s substitutions in casting (Andrew Robinson assumed Josue Laboucane’s roles as Priest and Sugarsop, whilst Josh Johnston assumed Robinson’s as Comic Bride and Gregory), asserting, ‘In my day, the only way you didn’t do a show is if you were dead’. He replaced Sly’s reference to ‘the fat ale-wife of Wincot’ (Ind.2.19–20) with ‘the fat waitress at Foster’s on Downie’, a local bar, and mockingly termed the director’s previous Festival production – Abraham’s queer A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2014) – ‘My Big Gay Shakespearean Wedding’. Eventually knocked unconscious by an usher, Carlson was carried offstage upon ‘Lord’ Deborah Hay’s orders: his bearers ‘accidentally’ slammed his crotch into a pillar along the way. These modernizations, including Hay’s cross-dressing, rekindle the personalized address Elizabethan audiences would have experienced.
Whilst Hay impersonated a lord adroitly, tucking up her skirt to form breeches and accessing her lower register, her performance as Kate suffered from a shrill, screechy delivery which obliterated the nuances of her character’s emotions, especially in the marriage scene. She certainly personified ‘Kate the curst’ (2.1.184), though sometimes seemingly afraid of her own volume; however, she was most powerful when least frenzied, as in her first speechless glance at Petruchio (Carlson), or her teeth-clenched agreement that the ‘moon’ (4.6.17) shines.
Carlson offered an impressive, leonine Petruchio, yet one whose vulnerability seeped through at key moments. Melodramatic drumrolls accompanied his ‘Have I not in my time heard lions roar?’ (1.2.195) speech; his wedding costume included a protuberant, dildo-like codpiece; a forbidding trap-door led to his ‘bridal chamber’; and a string of sausages served as his whip during the boisterous banquet scene. However, upon first meeting Kate, Carlson’s Petruchio stumbled, stepping backwards onto the thrust-stage steps and lowering himself, physically and symbolically. He replicated this descent in the final scene following Kate’s pseudo-submissive speech and delivered his final lines through tears. Whilst his ‘Thou know’st not gold’s effect’ (1.2.89) was rather rushed, his timing elsewhere was excellent, as in his effective pause when awaiting Kate’s final appearance, and his audience-directed glare after praising the ‘quiet life’ (5.2.112).
The production’s physicality was superb. Hay and Carlson transitioned from titillating wrangling involving face-to-genital contact, including Hay’s leg-enforced chokehold; to vitriolic disdain, as when Hay spat in response to Carlson’s plea, ‘kiss me, Kate’ (2.1.316); finally to such lustful passion that, upon their exit, they tore at each other’s clothing. Hay’s interactions with Bianca (Sarah Afful) were equally lively: she chased Afful with a sword; took scissors to Afful’s gown and hair; and engaged in a violent catfight with her. Mike Shara (Hortensio/Licio) provided excellent comic relief, swivelling his hips in wooing Bianca, fawning as Licio, and running into a pillar following Bianca’s rejection. Rooney’s Tranio infused new meaning into Baptista’s (Peter Hutt) line, ‘methinks you walk like a stranger’ (2.1.84–5), by swaggering lasciviously. Hutt’s timing and befuddlement were also exquisite.
The cast truly functioned as an ensemble. Carlson and Shara’s comical choral work in introducing ‘Licio’ resembled that in Cimolino’s The Alchemist (see my review below); the stage combat was believable; the gawking, dumbfounded silence following Kate and Petruchio’s wedding-day exit was fantastic; and Shara and Cyrus Lane’s (Lucentio) synchronized fainting was impressive. Rooney and an exuberant Gordon S. Miller (Biondello) worked in harmony, pseudo-conversing using pasta names, whilst Robert King’s Vincentio turned Petruchio and Kate’s jesting upon them, greeting Kate as ‘Fair sir’ and Petruchio as ‘my merry mistress’ (4.6.54). This final salutation underscored the fissure between appearance and reality, one of the play’s central themes.
Though not as radical as his Dream, Abraham’s ebullient Shrew was memorable and entertaining. It fused the contemporary with the traditional in a mode which recaptured the Elizabethan theatre-going experience. As with many modern productions of this potentially sexist play, Abraham’s version emphasized the contrived nature of Kate’s questionable transformation and final diatribe: the submission in her final monologue was overstated, thus deflating the text’s problematic patriarchal overtones.
Pericles is problematic in different ways. The play’s contested authorship – Shakespeare collaborated with another playwright, likely George Wilkins – often excludes it from performance as well as discussions of Shakespeare’s work. Furthermore, the episodic narrative roams to and fro over such a dizzying variety of locales (Antioch, Tyre/Tyrus, Tarsus, Pentapolis, Ephesus, and Mytilene) that audiences may struggle in following the action.
Nevertheless, actor–director Scott Wentworth rose to the challenge. His Dickensian aesthetic complemented the play’s inherent darkness, redemption and magical, proto-gothic leanings: flickering candlelight lit the stage; the characters sported fitted bodices, black capes, top hats and cravats; a golden casket housed candles and the skulls of Antiochus’ (Wayne Best) nameless daughter’s (Deborah Hay) former suitors; and a covey of ghostly – yet serene – nuns floated along the stage’s edges, replacing Gower’s role as chorus. Certain characters served as Dickensian prototypes, such as the pale, inexpressive, pawn-like daughter to Antiochus; the Fagin-esque Pander (Keith Dinicol); and Simonides (Best again), whose feigned distemper and subsequent jig in toying with Pericles (Evan Buliung) and Thaisa (Hay) was Scrooge-like.
The production’s most captivating element was its ingenious use of a spindly, four-poster bed on wheels. The spectral, tester-less wooden frame first materialized as the incestuous abode of Antiochus and his daughter; then it became Pericles’ bed of worry; later, the whoremaster’s lust-stained pallet; and finally, Pericles’ reclusive hovel. It was effectively transformed into a ship, with ropes representing the sides and a bedsheet draped over the posters as a sail. It simultaneously functioned as ship and delivery- /death-bed, surging back and forth with the waves. The bed dominated the stage, its posters so oversized that actors could stand on the mattress and not grasp the tops. Its height and effortless lability suited the Patterson’s elongated thrust stage, over which it glided.
Wentworth’s emphasis on coherence was appropriate for this play of rebirth and resurrection. He cross-cast actors in congruent roles, such as Best (corrupt father Antiochus, loving father Simonides); Hay (automaton-daughter to Antiochus, wilful daughter Thaisa; also mother and daughter Thaisa and Marina); Marion Adler (nurse Lychorida, goddess Diana, aged Thaisa); and the exceptionally articulate E. B. Smith (would-be assassins Thaliard and Leonine). It was a clever, chilling twist to amalgamate Thaliard’s role with that of the Antiochian knight in Pentapolis, turning this otherwise nonspecific knight into a disguised assassin. Wentworth also staged a poignant, pre-interval encounter between the aged Thaisa (Adler) and grown Marina (Hay), in which the women passed but did not recognize one another. In the penultimate scene, daughter Marina shook Pericles out of his melancholic despondency by singing the very song that he had performed at the play’s beginning, reinforcing her role as long-lost redeemer.
Even so, the production suffered from inconsistencies. At the birthday tournament, Hay’s whimsical yet peculiar exclamations of ‘wing!’ whilst honouring each knight’s shoulders (excepting Pericles) with her sword – supposedly imitating the sound of metal on metal – seemed too modern, slapstick, and abstruse to cohere with the historical setting and her sincere character Thaisa; and the transition between Pericles’ woeful tale and the (admittedly well-executed) lovers’ dance seemed overly abrupt. Nor did Wentworth designate Adler ‘aged Thaisa’ in the programme, perhaps to sustain the surprise of first-time viewers upon her revelation; but in omitting this role, he may have perplexed audiences into thinking that Pericles was married to Diana. Shifting settings, not/insufficiently signposted, also proved disorienting.
Regardless, the actors’ engaging performances, harmonies, and movement carried the diegesis. Buliung was an amiable Pericles, whose unexpected comic inflections – as when lamenting, ‘No more, you gods’ (22.62) – amused. He might have engaged with the sexual implications of the term ‘fingered’ (1.125) when describing Antiochus’ daughter, but otherwise his performance was stirring.
Of exceptional note were the concluding recognition scenes – two of the most poignant in Shakespeare. The breath-holding tension of the first, involving Hay (as Marina) and Buliung, resolved itself in such delicate, tentative joy that it elicited audible cries and sobs in the audience. The final scene paled in comparison, but was moving and mystical in revealing a beaming Adler as, inexplicably, both the familiar, omnipresent guide Diana and the aged mother Thaisa. If only Hay had assumed a prolonged, silent, visible surveillance of Adler prior to the Marina-Thaisa reunion, as Laura Young demonstrated towards Jenny Bulcraig in the 2013–14 Ketterer’s Men production (The Shakespeare Institute), she would have increased the emotional valences of this scene exponentially.
Wentworth’s Pericles emerged as a visually stunning spectacle facilitated by excellent musical accompaniment. Its Dickensian flavour illuminated the play’s darker elements as well as its rapturous rebirths; and its modernity – in tackling incest, poverty, human trafficking, governance, rape, and the sex trade – seeped through due to the actors’ clear, nuanced delivery. Whilst additional signposting may have aided viewers, the audience’s deluge of emotion attested to the actors’ potency.
Visually arresting also was Antoni Cimolino’s Hamlet. With its mist-shrouded, glossy black obelisks of varying heights, the set resembled a graveyard whose tombstones were moveable set pieces. The interplay between shadow and light flung eerie reflections onto the obelisks, creating the uncanny illusion of ghostly figures slipping across the stage. For a play seething with existential deliberation, in which most characters – many of them young people – perish, a graveyard seemed an appropriate setting. Cimolino cloaks this grim memento mori in Downton Abbey-esque opulence, setting the production in pre-WWI 1914 – a world as close to the brink of military destruction as Hamlet’s.
Creating an authentic Hamlet is increasingly challenging. The play is a metonym for Shakespeare; it is his most iconic work. Even the well-versed Festival Artistic Director Cimolino seemingly encroached upon Adrian Noble’s aesthetic (Stratford Festival, 2008) with his concept. Noble’s sparkling Edwardian Hamlet was, for many, the definitive Canadian Hamlet, Ben Carlson the quintessential eponymous hero; Cimolino and his Hamlet (Jonathan Goad) braved the enormity of both play and predecessor in this production, and, unfortunately, struggled to outshine Noble and Carlson.
Goad aimed for a contemplative, wry Hamlet, yet one who frequently indulged in physical comedy. His intensity built up to climax at Ophelia’s death. However, the calm, measured preliminary scenes felt weak and underwhelming, sacrificed for the sake of this escalation. He almost resembled a whiny teenager, although, at 44, he is an older Hamlet; his hoodie-like, zip-front cardigan only enhanced this impression. Nevertheless, Goad did succeed in bringing out dark humour in unexpected places, as when he stood stock still as Claudius (Geraint Wyn Davies) embraced him at the beginning; when he replied earnestly, ‘Very like’ to Horatio’s (Tim Campbell) claim that the ghost ‘would have much amazed’ him (1.2.234–5); when he attempted to evade Tom Rooney’s Polonius (something that Mike Shara’s Laertes also did quite well); and when he gasped loudly following Guildenstern’s (Steve Ross) admission that he and Rosencrantz (Sanjay Talwar) were ‘sent for’ (2.2.284). His clowning was initially effective, as in his imitation of a crab when speaking of the ‘backward’ (202) crab, but became rather predictable by the point he impersonated the chameleon, and disturbing when he suckled Claudius as his ‘mother’ (4.3.53), stifling laughter instead of provoking it.
Regardless, Goad excelled at connecting with the audience, making us co-conspirators. In climbing the tallest obelisk when chasing the ghost, he elicited nervous concern; and his charming implication that we could be the ‘guilty creatures sitting at a play’ (2.2.566) generated laughs. His interactions with Ophelia (Adrienne Gould, Goad’s spouse) were heartfelt – the rejection scene was particularly wrenching, with Gould grasping at the shreds of the letters that Goad had torn, and both actors weeping and clinging to one another.
Although clad in a virginal, high-necked white dress, Gould’s Ophelia was pregnant, clasping her abdomen after gingerly returning her violin to a case resembling a child’s coffin in the mad scene. Here, Gould melded mourning and lust, repeating the Valentine’s song that she had performed with Polonius in an earlier scene. Her Ophelia was a conflicted one, as was Rooney’s blundering, sympathy-courting Polonius. In pausing before reading the ‘I love’ (2.2.119) in Hamlet’s letter, Rooney revealed Polonius’ realization of his error in separating the lovers.
Wyn Davies’ Ghost was not as powerful as his Claudius: particularly regrettable was his limp delivery of the revelation that the Ghost’s killer ‘[n]ow wears his crown’ (1.5.40). His puissant yet restrained Claudius, who contemptibly prodded the fallen Hamlet with his foot and pressed his chest to Laertes’ loaded gun, was much more arresting. Davies’ choice to drink – first from a tumbler, and then straight from the carafe – whilst praying was effective, as were his near-attack on the Players and his chilling subtlety. Seana McKenna’s blissfully ignorant Gertrude was enacted brilliantly, her love for Hamlet evident through every gesture. Her willow speech was clearly a fairy story meant to soften the news of Ophelia’s death.
Despite problems with audibility and somewhat choppy fencing, Cimolino’s Hamlet was ambitious, coherent, ghostly and unexpectedly comical. It rounded out the season of problematic plays, in conjunction with Caird’s production of the esoteric Love’s Labour’s; Abraham’s version of the potentially misogynist Shrew; and Wentworth’s interpretation of the obscure, co-written Pericles. One tragedy, two comedies, and a romance, these plays staged a range of early-, mid- and late-career Shakespeare, including what may be his most popular tragedy and his least-famous romance. The productions were artistically conservative, and each could have improved in certain areas; nonetheless, they succeeded in exposing the texts’ underlying humour and offered evocative performances and moments of ingenuity.