Commentary: A Mother’s Love
Shakespeare’s Ode to Mothers
Is Sometimes in their Absence
Many of Shakespeare’s plays have notable mothers missing—and one silent mother intriguingly present. Some plays do have mothers in key roles, even iconic ones. But when I started mulling over the state of motherhood in the full scope of his works, I realized that the absence of mothers could almost be connected into a thematic thread across the canon. To read the whole commentary, click here.
ON Stage: The Taming of the Shrew
Unnecessary Script Doctoring Ill-Treats
An Ideal Setting and Comic Playing
Katherine as a Calamity Jane, Petruchio as a Wild Bill Hickock, Padua as a Deadwood. We’ve seen an American Old West concept for The Taming of the Shrew before—almost exactly one month before, in fact, by New York’s Theatre for a New Audience. In between, we also saw Synetic’s dance version of the play set in the American New West, i.e., Hollywood. For directors seeking a new way to present the play, the Wild West of lore holds obvious potential: it was a patriarchal society where money and feistiness were the best avenues to power (and a combination of the two the surest means to power). That society’s near-lawless nature also suits the rough-and-tumble tone inherent in the play; after all, Kate hogties Bianca.To read the full review, click here.
On stage: The Winter's Tale
Trust the Bard, for His Magic Is True
The Winter’s Tale is a tricky play to pull off. It’s a play of mystery and mysticism, but there is more mystery in the play’s composition and structure than in its plot and presentation. Did Shakespeare really know what he was doing when he wrote this play? This seems the work of an amateur scriptwriter, not the world’s greatest playwright in the evening of his career. Ah, but there is genius in this work, and it fully emerged in the ASC’s production at The Blackfriars, revealed not only in wonderful performances but, perhaps more importantly, through director Jim Warren’s academic alchemy. For the full review, click here.
On stage: 'Tis Pity She’s a Whore
A Play with No Whores, and Less Pity
Some plays’ plots in the late 16th and early 17th centuries turn on social taboos that today have become a “so what?” We must accept long-past moral conventions and convictions to fully appreciate the plots of, for example, Measure for Measure, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and All’s Well That Ends Well. Incest, however, is as abhorrent to us today as it is for the characters of 16th century Parma in John Ford’s’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, written around 1630. To continue, click here.
On stage: Hamlecchino, Clown Prince of Denmark
Hamlet Was Wrong: Anything So Overdone
Can Be to the Purpose of Playing
Ophelia was not laid in her grave. Her brother, Laertes, instead carried her down into the pit, and with the Faction of Fools performing a commedia dell’arte version of Hamlet, you just knew Shakespeare’s most absurd scene in this play was about to get more absurd. Sure enough, Hamlet and Laertes fought in the grave using Ophelia’s hands to slap each other’s faces and poke each other’s eyes. Then they left her body draped over the front skirt of the stage. With Hamlecchino, Clown Prince of Denmark, Faction of Fools was not necessarily doing something new with Shakespeare’s most famous play; rather, they were attempting to make the play even older than it is. To continue, click here.
On screeN: Hamlet
A Timeless Hamlet in a Dated Production
When Kenneth Branagh was filming his 1996 Hamlet, the actor playing Claudius staged an impromptu ceremony, handing Branagh a small red-bound copy of the play. It was a tradition, begun with Johnston Forbes-Robertson who played Hamlet in the late 19th century, that each recipient would pass the book on to the greatest Hamlet of the next generation. Thus, that tag was passed on to Branagh, the Hamlet of the 1990s, from Derek Jacobi, the great Hamlet of the 1970s. Although Jacobi’s Hamlet played out in a 1977 Prospect Theatre Company production with long runs in London and a two-year world tour, we get at least a taste of that performance with the BBC/Time-Life version of the play. To continue, click here.
On stage: the taming of the shrew
It’s All about Image in Paduawood
To call this “William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew” is to some degree false advertising. It’s not exactly Shakespeare. Though it is the latest in the Silent Shakespeare series from the dance and mime company of Synetic Theater, director Paata Tsikurishvili distanced this production from the original text much further than he did with Synetic’s Romeo and Juliet last year. It’s not really a “taming” either, for though Kate breaks down—from exhaustion more than anything else—the final coupling of Kate and Petruchio comes about through rom-com conventions. The “shrew” in the title? That’s accurate. In this present-day, “Paduawood”–set Taming of the Shrew, Irina Tsikurishvili is one hell-raiser of a Kate, the volatile daughter of famous fashion designer Baptista and sister of the starlet Bianca. To continue, click here.
On stage: Strange Interlude
A Marathon of a Play Leaving Us Breathless in the Presentation
I’m not about to pretend I know anything about Eugene O’Neill. I’ve read more about him than by him, and that, frankly, scared me away from him. But as this seldom-performed piece was part of our Shakespeare Theatre Company annual subscription, I could no longer hide from my destined intersection with O’Neill. I’m the better for it. This play is long-winded and populated with forced profundities, but O’Neill in Strange Interlude nevertheless ingeniously crafted an eight-character study with a taut plot. What might have been little more than a soap opera (after all, the original script clocked in at more than five hours) crackled more as a mystery noir because O’Neill so richly drew the characters and STC’s cast so endearingly played them. To continue, click here.
On stage: being shakespeare
Being There When Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
People have looked for Shakespeare in his plays and poems. They have found in them the courtier, the nobleman, the soldier, the sailor, the teacher. Yet the profession that gets perhaps the most detailed mention in Shakespeare’s works—but ironically it is the profession most ignored by those who seek the author’s autobiography in his works—is the theater. That Shakespeare the playwright was obsessed with acting, in both an allegorical sense as well as the profession’s portrayal, emerges in Jonathan Bate’s Being Shakespeare, a one-man play performed by Simon Callow and taking up a short residence at BAM during its global trek. To continue, click here.
ON Stage: The Taming of the Shrew
A Wild West Setting for A Not-So-Wild Shrew
Kate and Petruchio are in love. The affection they show for each other at play’s end is genuine and mutual. In Arin Arbus’ Old West staging for Theatre for a New Audience, Maggie Siff's Kate concluded her long speech on a wife’s duty to her husband by lowering to her knees, and Andy Grotelueschen’s Petruchio kneeled opposite her. “Why, there’s a wench!” he said admiringly. “Come on, and kiss me, Kate,” and the kiss was a passionate one. Petruchio then showed Kate the money he had won wagering on her. She first expressed surprise—not so much that he bet on her obedience but at the amount he won (she knew he was up to something)—that slid to a look that said, admiringly, “Why, here’s a rascal!” To continue, click here.
On stage: A weekend at the Blackfriars Playhouse
A Mad World, My Masters:
Art and Burlesque, Past, Present, and Future
Anybody who thinks R-rated culture is an outgrowth of the liberal 1960s and yearns for the perceived decency of good old days has never seen or read a Thomas Middleton play—or many plays by his contemporaries, for that matter, including one William Shakespeare. Just as the current box office hit 21 Jump Street is in-your-face raunchy comedy, but played with a sweetness of heart by its stars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, et al., so is A Mad World, My Masters a bawdy romp of subtle and not-so-subtle sexual jokes, played with a sense of soul by its stars Daniel Kennedy and Gregory Jon Phelps, et al. To continue, click here.
Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding: Out of Archetypes Rises a Splendid Play
While it had more than its fair share of heartbreaking moments, Philaster also had non-stop intrigue and some extraordinary speeches, all carried out by the Actors' Renaissance Season company with ease and affection. Beaumont and Fletcher clearly had some skills in composition (the latter had enough skill for Shakespeare to collaborate with him on three plays). If there’s any 400-year-after quarterbacking to be leveled at Beaumont and Fletcher, it was the choice of genre they made their specialty: tragicomic romances with whimsical, fairy-tale-like plots and archetype characters. For the full review, click here.
Dido, Queen of Carthage: Style + Substance = Engrossing Theater
It’s like watching soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines at a formal dinner, wearing their mess dress uniforms and ramrod in posture, honoring the formalities and paying genuine respect to the customs and traditions. These men and women don’t dress and behave like that normally, but the dress and behavior is required of such a formal event and in turn makes the event special. Such is Christopher Marlowe's plays; your heart will swell with the moment as your soul admires the art, similar to opera, if you accept the form. For the full review, click here.
On STAGE: The Merchant of Venice
Hitting the Reset Button,
Bare Bard Players
Present Shakespeare's Intended Comedy
Here’s a revelation that should not be a revelation: The Merchant of Venice is a comedy. When played without a director’s agenda (indeed, without even a director) and without any preconceived Semitic sensitivities on the part of the players (indeed, all they have to work from is Shakespeare’s text), it is a funny play. In the hands of the Maryland Shakespeare Festival’s Bare Bard Repertory, who put on its production under the above conditions, it was a good play and a good time, too. To continue, click here.