“I am not a
politician. I am a musician. I care about giving people a place where they can
go to enjoy themselves and begin to live again. To the man you have to give the
spirit, and when you give him the spirit, you have done everything.”
-Luciano Pavarotti
Okay, here it is. Here’s the gushing Globe entry. I might do
another one after my Shakespeare performance final, but that’ll be an entirely
different situation. But coming on the heels of a disappointing experience with
the Royal Shakespeare Company, the evening I just had is indescribable. In the
interest of the blog, though, I will try.
You’d Think the Queen
Could Do Better
Last weekend, our class was taken on the holy pilgrimage to
Stratford-Upon-Avon. Hilariously, most of us had been up the night before doing
things that are very characteristic of college students, so we enjoyed very
little of the famously picaresque British countryside on the way up.
The town of Stratford itself is incredibly quaint. It
reminds me a lot of Port Jefferson, the town on Long Island where I was born
and where my grandparents still live. It’s large enough to have a good amount
of little shops and pretty parks, but not so big that these things are all
seedy. The river Avon has a waterfront that feels very much like a miniature
version of the docks in Port Jefferson, complete with boats you can rent all of
which are named after Shakespeare characters.
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| It seems kind of counterintuitive to name a canoe after the character in The Tempest that causes shipwrecks. |
And, just a short walk from the town are lovely open fields
that make you feel very much like getting a flock of sheep and taking up the
pan pipes.
 |
| Why are you reading this? You really think I have anything to say that more entertaining than that picture? |
We spent a good amount of time in between our two
performances just wandering about. We saw the cottage Shakespeare was born in;
we visited his gravesite; we marveled at the full English breakfast that we got
for only £5 (including tea). But none of that, except perhaps that last
one had quite the effect on me that I expected. For a Shakespeare dork like me,
I expected that visiting Shakespeare’s hometown would be like a major religious
experience. The thing is, while the town is nice, it doesn’t feel markedly
different from your average east coast small town back in the U.S. And it
certainly doesn’t feel overly Shakespearean. And then there was the show.
We saw The Comedy of
Errors and Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Pericles was an amateur cast with the
RSC providing the technical and design aspects of the production. As such, I
don’t feel right critiquing it too critically. Also, it did not provoke as
strong a reaction from me as Comedy of
Errors. So, that’s what I’m going to talk about.
Let me just say up front that Comedy of Errors is easily my least favorite of all the Shakespeare
I’ve read. I have a distinct problem with mistaken identity as a comedic
device, but in a play with many other things going for it, like Twelfth Night (Which has a special place
in my heart, since a local college production I saw back when I was in high
school is what first turned me on to Shakespeare), I can forgive it. The
problem is that mistaken identity is what drives the plot entire of Comedy of Errors. To me the notion of a
character being able to clear up all of the problems in a story by simply
stating one fact (i.e. “I am not from around here. I think you’ve mistaken me
for someone else.”) is not comedic. It’s the definition of tragic irony.
And tragic definitely seems to be the problem here. Comedy of Errors is being presented
alongside Twelfth Night and The Tempest (Both of which are
undisputedly far superior plays, in my opinion) as the “Shipwreck Trilogy.” The
problem is that out of these three, Comedy
is the lightest. There is very little that is philosophically troubling about
it. The trouble is that this production, which sets the action in a Central
American police-state, is so completely at odds with the source text that I got
the impression watching it that the team behind it were more interested in
their concept than with Shakespeare’s words, which is a problem since that’s
what makes Shakespeare good. His settings are shallow and his plots are nearly
all recycled from other sources. His language and his characters are what made
him immortal.
I don’t have a problem with conceptually driven Shakespeare
in general, but if a concept is put on a play, it had better be for a textually
supported reason. For instance, the film version of Richard III with Sir Ian McKellen (whom, incidentally, I saw in the
audience of another play this past week) sets the story in an alternate
universe of the 1930/40s in which England is a fascist state. However, despite
the extremity of the concept, it works because it uses the audience’s knowledge
to emphasize the inherently vile nature that McKellen’s Richard exudes. By
associating the character in the play with a period and figure in history that
is cultural shorthand for wickedness and frightening power-lust, the director
is able to use his concept to draw out things in the text. In contrast, this
production of Comedy of Errors was
hindered by its concept by the simple fact that the play contains a great deal
of slapstick, which is less funny when the play begins with the Duke of Ephesus
water-boarding Egeus. The audience is left unsure of which violence is okay to
laugh at.
Granted, this is only one production out of many in the
RSC’s season, so I’m not eliminating the possibility that there aren’t much
better productions being mounted at Stratford, but if this show was any
indication, there’s much, much better Shakespeare being done in London by other
companies. Speaking of which…
Mark. Effing.
Rylance.
I write this having just come back from the last production
I’ll see at The Globe (Hopefully not forever, but at least this year).
Technically speaking, it should have been Twelfth
Night, which was the last one included in the money we paid for the London
program, however Richard III was not
included in that program. Luckily, one of my classmates and I were lucky enough
to snag tickets for the second-to-last performance before the show transfers to
the West End. In short: it was awesome.
The cast of Richard
III is the same as Twelfth Night,
minus Stephen Fry, who is not missed in the slightest, but are obviously more
at home in this show. It’s understandable, given that Richard III has been running since July while Twelfth Night only opened a few weeks ago. Also, from what we’ve
heard, the night we saw Twelfth Night was
an off night, which happens to even the best of productions. I think that even
discounting this variable, though, the thing that makes this Richard III easily the best Shakespeare
I’ve ever seen performed can be summed up in three words:
Mark. Effing. Rylance.
He was undeniably good as Olivia in Twelfth Night (Both that and Richard
are “original practices productions” which recreate the music, design, and
casting as closely as possible to Elizabethan/Jacobean standards), however
Richard is a star vehicle that a great actor can let his talent run wild with.
I already talked about Ian McKellen’s Richard III, which was the extent of my experience with the work
walking into the theatre. I was surprised and incredibly moved by the immensely
different route Rylance took with the character. McKellen’s Richard is cold,
ruthless, and manipulative. We enjoy him because he is so clearly smarter and
bolder than those around him. Rylance’s Richard is almost the exact opposite.
His physical deformities are far more pronounced, making him physically
unthreatening. These are coupled with a pronounced stammer and an almost
childlike disposition. The audience is with him because they truly pity him. He
does not know how to deal with the world and when he lashes out he does so with
the same attitude as a child flipping over the Monopoly board. This comes off
as darkly comic for much of the play, however by the time we reach Richard’s
monologue right before the climactic final battle, the audience sees how
Richard’s actions for the whole play have been an attempt to cure his
deep-seated self-loathing, which he only now realizes is doomed to failure.
It’s one of the absolute most amazing pieces of acting that I have ever seen.
Not just on a technical and dramaturgical level, but because it genuinely
touches the audience.
For much of my life, I’ve struggled with low self-esteem.
Even now, as I’ve found myself slowly shedding the problem, I still from time
to time suffer from spells that are frighteningly similar to Rylance’s choked,
frantic delivery of that soliloquy. The scene was able to stimulate me not only
as a scholar who recognized the literary implications and validity of the
choice, not only as an actor who recognized the excellent use of voice,
movement, and drawing upon motivation and personal experience, but also as
simply a human being who understands what its like to be in that position.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the philosophy behind
theatre. For a while now, at least in intellectual circles, it’s been what I’d
call the “Political Philosophy” which holds that theatre should leave the
audience unsatisfied, questioning what they just experienced, and thinking
about their society. It’s a very Brechtian approach and I’m not saying it’s
necessarily entirely without merit, but to me it seems there’s something to be
said for the alternative, what I call “Therapeutic Philosophy,” when it’s done
well. Let’s face it; modern life is complicated and chaotic. It’s also intensely
political. People in America tend to strongly identify with their political
party and their views on issues, which create deep social divisions. I don’t
know about you, but I really don’t
like to be reminded of that fact when I go to the theatre or the movies. There
is such a lack of compassion in day to day living that I think we’re only just
starting to feel how savagely it affects us. I think that the ideal theatre,
therefore, should not foster our feelings of uncertainty and alienation. We’ve
got plenty of those just from being in the world. Art should try to provide the
audience a safe space to deal with those internal ambiguities and help them
come to terms with their realities, thus preparing them to face them with
strength and confidence when the play has ended. That’s what I experienced
tonight watching Richard III. I
recognized my own insecurities in the character and in doing so saw the logical
conclusion of dealing with them in an unhealthy manner played out dramatically
on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe. And when I left, I found myself excited to
tackle my anxieties in life, because I was sure that I could find a better way
of dealing with them than killing a whole bunch of my relatives in a power grab
and then using that power to silence everyone I perceived as any sort of threat
to me.
Well, I’m rambling now and it may or may not be making any
sense. I guess that what I’m saying is tonight was a profoundly moving artistic
experience for me which was well worth paying £5 to stand in one spot for three
hours.
