20 posts tagged “theatre”
I am teaching a night class on Women in American Theatre, starting from early American theatre (around the 1750s) to the present. It is a grad-level course and I have about 11 students.
The early years focus on actresses, mostly. Two of the earliest are Charlotte Cushman and Fanny Kemble: in separate ways they are both fascinating examples of how women in particular negotiated the contradictions and confusions of American theatre.
Cushman is considered the first great native-born American actress. She was also an anomaly in that she didn't physically fit the leading lady type: she was tall, broad shouldered, and had a deep voice... for a girl. She was, however, surprisingly popular with audiences from the beginning; she also found roles that foregrounded her abilities. Rather than play Juliet or Ophelia--typical ingenue-heroine roles in mid-nineteenth century America--in favor of Romeo and Lady Macbeth.
Between 1835 and 1874, she worked the entire east coast of the US: Boston, New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Albany... and everyone in between. She managed the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia--making her one of the first female managers in American theatre, although few people write or discuss this aspect of her work.
Cushman played at least 16 cross-dressed roles, the most popular of which were Romeo and Hamlet. She was in fact more of a character actress than a leading lady... which never stopped her from playing leading roles, be they male or female.
She succeeded here in America, and then toured to Europe, staying there four years. When she returned, she negotiated a salary equal to any leading male actor: a sign of her popularity and talent.
William Winter, the drama critic for the New York Times, said of her “She was incarnate power: she dominated by intrinsic authority; she was a woman born to command and to such minds as comprehended authentic leadership she achieved immediate, complete and permanent conquest.”
Cushman herself said of her art “Art is an absolute mistress, she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs.”
She lived in lesbian relationships, what were known as "Boston marriages," with several different women: the sculptor Emma Stebbins and the actress and writer Matilda Hays among others. She also helped other women pursue their artistic careers, acting as an early feminist mentor within the female arts community.
Cushman died in 1876 of breast cancer.
Fanny Kemble was another early success story: born in Britain, into the leading theatre family, Kemble had little or no training, but was popular on the London stage in the typical ingenue roles--especially Juliet--that Cushman avoided.
Kemble came to the USA in 1832, accompanying her father, Charles, on his acting tour of the new country. In 1834, she married a young man who had swept her off her feet: Pierce Butler, the grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and heir to a tobacco/cotton/rice plantation off the coast of Georgia. On marrying Butler, Kemble gave up the stage to take on the role of wife. She accompanied Butler to Georgia, to his inherited plantation, in 1838... and saw slavery first-hand.
That was the end of her marriage, essentially. She and Butler disagreed about his ownership of slaves: she found herself firmly on the abolition side, while Butler refused to consider such a policy. In 1847 she returned to the stage, travelling to Europe; Butler filed for divorce, accusing her of abandonment, both of him and their two daughters.
After the divorce, Kemble picked up her theatrical career, making a period "lateral" move into reading: instead of performing roles in full productions, Kemble created a career giving public readings. She focused on Shakespeare, "performing" readings of Juliet, Ophelia, Rosalind, Viola, and other women from the playwright's work. Kemble also published her diary from that time in Georgia, documenting her impressions of and reactions to the practices of slavery she witnessed on her ex-husband's plantations.
Kemble struggled in a different manner than Cushman against the stereotypes for women in performance. Kemble gave up theatre for the traditional road: roles of wife, mother, helpmeet, soul mate. Kemble certainly fit the physical types of ingenues and leading ladies, she also had the talent and work ethic (not to mention connections!) to make a career in theatre work, and audiences loved her.
But... Kemble couldn't sink her independent thought for marriage. She couldn't give up her "troublesome" opinions or agree to agree with her husband's p.o.v. Instead, she persevered, fought, nagged, whatever about what she thought was right... right out of her marriage. In the end, her husband went bankrupt (losing over $700,000 and selling all his slaves in the largest single auction of human beings on record). Their daughters split over the politics: one agreed with Kemble, one with Butler.
Both women operated outside the box, so to speak, to make peace with their own inability to conform to conventional patterns for actresses and for women during the period of the 1830s through 1870s.
Pearl
The outcome of last night's performances in our new plays festival was... SUCCESS. I was very pleased at the opening night performances of two one-acts by two of my senior playwriting students! Both comedies, they were so funny the audiences couldn't stop laughing. Brava, ladies!
(Wow, I'm so excited my grammar has gone to pieces!)
The directors did fine jobs with casting and staging, while the actors were spot-on in their timing. The house was nearly filled--great for a Wednesday night!--and the audience of students, faculty, parents, friends, and strangers obviously enoyed themselves mightily. Bodes well for the next four nights (and matinees!).
And while the budgets have obviously been decreased this year for production, the effort the students put in was, of course, 110%--as it always is.
The fact is that this particular program--the new plays festival--derives a lot of its energy from the complete immersion by students into the project, Writers, directors, designers, actors, crew, and stage management are students... and they love that they own the projects. Sometimes, student actors feel cheated because they are not in a faculty-directed play or a play by a "name" playwright, but most often they love being in new work imagined by one of their own. I find audiences incredibly welcoming to the work, and that definitely includes our core of non-parent, non-friend spectators and subscribers who come to see what these young people have cooked up.
I was especially pleased because yesterday afternoon--after posting--I had class with these soon-to-be-graduated senior writers, and we had a lively discussion about what they learned through production, collaboration, and rewriting, and what they would do differently or the same next time (!) they get produced, and what the next step in their process with these plays would be. It was a great class and a nice addition to my day of Challenges and Opportunities.
It is a pleasure to teach funny, smart, engaging students who are passionate about what they do.
Pearl
A while ago (like in January) I had the bright idea to add some more difficult reading to my syllabus for theatre history--y'know, mix it up beyond the textbook--and so at this part of the course I added short snips of essays by Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner to our discussions about Romanticism and Rebellion in the 19th century, setting the stage (so to speak) for an ongoing discussion of artistic aesthetics, artistic rebellion and conformity, and Big Thoughts of the 19th century.
My plan was that yesterday we'd spend an 80-minute period discussing Victor Hugo's "Preface to Cromwell" and two snips from Richard Wagner's "Art-Work of the Future" (snips about The Folk and The Artist) to initiate a discussion about bohemia and artistic rebellion in the context of the macrocosm that was Europe.
The students in this class are, generally, very, very good. Smart, funny, challenging, delightful, complex. I have a few kids that are not "present" (meaning, in educator-speak, prepared on a daily basis and ready to go)--but not many. And yesterday, many of them were. Ready-to-go.
We had a delightful, complicated discussion about Hugo and his writing, but--because they are sophomores and not grad students (thank Thespis!) it went in a slightly different direction than I planned. As usual. Some of them were taken aback by Hugo's Big Pompous Voice (and we didn't even start with Wagner!). By his arrogance and certainty about the Right Direction to go. They were confused by his clear use of Christian rhetorical style and references to Christian principles as central to Romantic ideals. They found his less than accurate discussion of medieval history illogical.
They find the notion of audiences rioting in the theatres... amusing. Confusing. Surprising.
We are all just too well-behaved and too bored at the theatre any more. But that's another post.
I was surprised that Hugo's call to an end of conventional forms didn't resonate with them more clearly. It is--like most artistic manifestos (manifesti?)--an appeal to artistic youth to rebel against and overturn "conventional" forms created by older generations. The Romantics didn't invent rebellion, but they refined it, giving artistic rebellion a political polish and pedestal.
And are not my students "artistic youth"?
Y'huh.
(Note: I cannot find any good images of either a young Hugo to insert here, or an image where he is not holding his head. Seriously.)
We had to discuss the fact that movements--and their manifesti--are sloppy, messy, mostly disorganized things that, sometimes surprisingly, succeed. And more often fail. The American colonists who rebelled against their mother country: that succeeded. The French citizens who rebelled against their monarchy, church, and economy: that succeeded... for a while, and then it ate itself (and then set off a whole century of political, social, and artistic upheaval--luckily for us). The Romantics: successful! Other rebels, political and artistic... not so successful.
The Romantics were a sloppy group who did not agree or fall into line (imagine!). Even with Hugo. So while Hugo is a passionate and representative thinker/writer of the Romantic movement, not all Romantics are lock-step in line with him. In fact, like most artistic movements, it is like herding cats. The English vs. the French--and forget about the Germans! Or the Americans (everyone does). The composers vs. the painters, vs. the playwrights or poets...
It was a movement about the individual in heroic rebellion: so they all rebelled and non-conformed. Surprise! Evening within the movement.
But Hugo touches all the key concepts: rebellion, individual superior to the community, nature as sacred, call for celebration of medeval culture, sublime and grotesque seen as one (better than classical "beauty"), Artist-Poet as genuis leading the way in the wilderness, end to old forms/styles/conventions, and so on. And he is a passionate evangelical on these points.
I think the most successful part of our discussion was the opening up to the notion that theatre--as an art, as a choice of profession, as an aesthetic choice by individuals or groups--was and is a political notion. That an artist doesn't have to state his intent to overturn the government to rebel effectively. That an artist, like Hugo, for personal reasons including ego and disgust, can decide to Reject Old Forms and to reinvent the Role of the Artist-Poet within the artistic community... and that that decision can have a profound effect. Even if he focuses only within his circle of artistic colleagues, his agent, his publisher, his family, his books and poems and plays.
Of course, Hugo had a much larger effect on French aesthetics, literature, politics, and cultural life in general during his long, long life. But he started creating that effect when he was less than 25 years old.
And after all, rebellion and revolution is a young person's game. When you look at what "old people" are doing and are so certain, so confident that you know better. That you can do better. That your ideas will work more efficiently, more articulately, that they are brilliant and passionate and new...
Fantabulous day in the classroom, despite not covering all material.
Pearl
I had never seen the musical INTO THE WOODS and so rented it on Netflix. I was especially interested because I love Sondheim's work (I think with Sondheim it is love or hate... and mostly I love it). SWEENEY TODD is one of my favorite musicals, all Brechtian and bloody and terrifying and yet (as is usual with SS's material) filled with some of the sweetest ballads in the middle of all that.
But I especially wanted to see the Broadway version because Ben Wright, who plays Jack, was a student of mine at Indiana. That was after INTO THE WOODS, when he came to college because he wanted to learn about and study the profession at which he had already succeeded. He was a delightful student and in this production a delightful actor.
The musical is of course absolutely brilliant, and to my surprise Joanna Gleason was superb as the baker's wife. Funny and smart and dead comic.
I was also teaching my master's class students, the soon-to-be-graduating seniors, about adaptation. I wish I'd had the wit to bring this with me today, because not only is the play a great example of how to adapt non-dramatic sources to theatre, but about how to put your own twist on those original sources.
And yet--in the end--Sondheim does what fairy tales do, which is teach a "moral" lesson. Or several. While entertaining.
I am covered in admiration and envy.
Pearl
Ok, I give up. You asked for it.
1. I am an Aquarius, born in February (the birthday's come and gone, people).
2. When I was younger ('way younger) I had crushes on Keith Partridge, Speed Racer, Ilya Kuryakin (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'s sidekick), and, according to my mother, Lloyd Bridges.
3. My love of theatre may have been born when I was seven. My dad took my brother and me to the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven for a Saturday matinee of Sleeping Beauty, and when Prince Charming entered through the audience he sat down next to me and sang his charming love song to me.
4. I used to check out stacks of adult fiction from the public library when I was seven, and my mother would have to argue with the librarians every week about her liberal child-rearing policies.
5. My first real job was as a grocery check-out chick. It is the only job I was ever fired from.
6. My favorite childhood book was The Secret Garden.
7. My favorite adult book is either The Great Gatsby or Lord Jim.
8. The books that always make me cry are The Velveteen Rabbit, Of Mice and Men, and Flowers for Algernon. I'm already crying, and I haven't even read them... that's how powerful they are.
9. I never read Dr. Seuss, and I don't get The Cat in the Hat. I find The Cat annoying.
10. I love throwing clay pots.
11. I love the batting cages.
12. I love waking up in the morning when it is still dark outside: cozy.
13. I decided my sister's name should be Sally. It wasn't and isn't--not even close--but I called her Sally for a long time.
14. I learned poker from the encyclopedia when I was 12. Then taught the neighborhood kids.
15. When I was a book publicist in NYC I booked Clive Barker's first New York City/USA tour, and escorted him to all the interviews. It is one of my favorite memories of those nasty years.
16. I was also book publicist--briefly--for Hamilton Jordan, who was much like the Prince Charming of my Long Wharf days. He didn't sing, but he was incredibly delightful (Southern!) and incredibly intelligent. Listening to him chat with the editorial staff of Newsweek was like watching Fred Astaire dance. And he sat next to me while he did it.
17. I had tea with Margaret Truman.
18. I met my favorite New York boyfriend at the Peppermint Lounge. He made a path to the front of the audience for my friend and me--we're both about 5' tall, he's 6'2" or so--so we could see the band. It turned out that we went to the same college, although he was two years ahead of me and we never met. Our first date was brunch at Tavern on the Green, where we sat next to Marvin Hamlisch and his date. It was very Sex and The City.
19. I moved from NYC to Carbondale, IL, to go to grad school.
20. I like bananas but hate banana-flavored things of all kinds.
21. I wrote my first play in 4th grade and my first novel in 6th grade.
22. My favorite place in the world is Florence, but I would rather live in Paris, my close-second favorite place.
23. I hate chick lit and I hate the term "chick lit": although I like books that others describe as chick lit.
24. I might be agoraphobic.
25. According to a man I met at a psychic fair, in a previous life I was a musician, an excellent and gifted professional musician. Which explains why in this life I greatly enjoy music, but don't perform or even play too well. I bet my mother wishes she had known that before the piano, clarinet, and violin lessons...
Pearl
As I mentioned in my first post and rarely since, I am in Paris researching actresses working in Paris in the second half of the 19th century and the image of the Actress in cultural play during that same time and place; my final study with analyze the relationship between the two. Since I've been in Paris, my work in the library has consisted of a varied diet of the following:
- secondary sources by French scholars on this subject that aren't to be found in the States
- popular novels and plays of the period between 1850 and 1905 that are also difficult to find in the States but whose narrative centers around a female performer (actress, singer, or dancer)
- period newspapers and journals, including journals and magazines aimed at women, for reviews about various plays, news about female performers and theatre, interviews of female performers, endorsements and ads featuring same
- tracking down biographical details of actresses identified in photographs and stories, if there is any
- studying French laws about theatre and the "code" applied to theatre performers governing behavior in the theatres during rehearsals, performances, and all professional time
- memoirs, autobiographies, and histories including written during my period that use female performers (any of them) as subject matter
- tracking down photographs and other iconographic sources using actresses or other female performers
- tracking down more elusive information, like actresses' "other work" as artists' models, nude or pornographic photo models, and prostitutes
One of the ongoing issues in this study is that while many of those who write about actresses are actually talking about the image or stereotype of the Actress--not the women who worked in the jobs. Or they write about actors altogether, combining male and female performers under the same umbrella, but it is clear that there were specific differences between the economic and social realities of the different gendered performers; for one, French state law treated them differently. Or they write about celebrities like Bernhardt as if she represented all actresses--which she did and didn't at the same time. Or they write about literature featuring the Actress.
This week I read a memoir of a statesman and journalist about his youth under Napoleon III. His constant mention of actresses focused on them as mistresses of famous men and as ornaments of public life. Another memoir, this time by an actor, detailed his seduction at 16 by a famous actress, then married and older than him, in her scented boudoir; the account ended with the mention of her death by disease a few years later.
The Actress was a central stereotype of French culture during the Second Empire and Third Republic. She was everywhere, part of the developing consumer and visual culture of the period, the luxury culture that France was interested in exporting and in using to attract visitors (especially wealthy American visitors). The Actress (meaning the image and stereotype) reflected both the high number of women to be found on Paris's stages during this time (in theatre, opera, ballet, cafe-concerts, cabarets, vaudevilles, and other forms of performance) and the preoccupation of journalists, visual arrtists, and writers with this figure, seen in public spaces on and off the actual stages. The reality of working actresses fed the stereotype, and the media, artists, and writers used the stereotype to define a certain kind of character within French culture of the period.
The really amazing thing is that the Actress (stereotype) is literally everywhere. Everywhere. So... a lot of material.
There is a definite trajectory as well from the beginning of the Second Empire through the Third Republic. The interaction of the state and theatre in France was defined by the politics of the era, especially in Paris where government was just down the road from the theatres, and politicians were often patrons of theatre and of actresses.
Quite a bit of what I am doing is tracking the stereotype through various media and art forms, both high and low.
These two pictures are of Sarah Bernhardt, arguably the most famous actress and one of the msot famous personalities of her day. To a lot of period in the second half of the 19th century, she epitomized the Actress. The photograph above was taken by the famous photographer Nadar when she was about 18, one of a series from the same session. The poster depicted on the left is later in her career (much later) when she controlled almost all her media. The actress as personality and model, the actress as Joan of Arc, the character she performed and an essential "spirit" of France, the actress as celebrity, the actress as a recognizable face: a whole cornucopia of sign systems, right here.
Most actresses, however, were far less well-known, and in fact found that the stereotype preceded them everywhere. By the end of the 1850s, the stereotype was established in literature, journalism, visual art, and cafe culture. Photography and the emergence of artists like Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, who featured working-class models, added to the public attitudes toward dancers, singers, and actresses.
Pearl
Warning: not a political post... beyond the fact that everything is political.
In dramatic writing, character is defined (and thus made interesting) by choice.
Every choice is an action, every choice moves the narrative closer to its climax, every choice heightens the spectator's connection to the action. Every choice defines character. This is a loop that takes on a special twist in dramatic writing.
"A character" is not the same as what Aristotle means by "character" in The Poetics. A character is Hamlet, Willy Loman, Nora: an individual human entity performed by an actor. Character, to Aristotle, meant the sum of the choices made and the actions taken by an entity performed by an actor. The sum is more important than the individual choice. By reading the tracks of character demonstrated by individual entities from inciting incident to climax (or denouement) the spectator decodes the narrative of the play and its meanings for him and for the playwright (separate things).
In dramatic writing, the difficulty is that all choices and actions must be shown (and heard) not narrated. The writer's tools are dialogue and stage direction. The writer's first audience is the actor, and secondly the spectator in the theatre: all things being equal, if the actor cannot use the playwright's text as the medium for her performance, the writer fails.
The text, in other words, has to be a transformational medium that the actor can embody.
This is not the way that prose writers conceive character. Nor it is usually how contemporary screenwriters or playwrights think. This view of character is more in keeping with the theatre Aristotle experienced in live performance. Greek theatre was not initially a performance venue where the actor was central. Actors were instead defined and hidden by the mask and apparel that defined the entity he was performing. A full-head mask including hair and apparel drawn from contemporary Greek clothing worn by that same audience (usually) = costume. Costume defined the onstage characters the same way it defined the spectators in Greece's strictly hierarchical society (first instance of theater as mirror?). Forget ideas that costume was exaggerated: only in comedy, and there it was about exaggerating gender characteristics of both sexes.
Costume showed the audience the following: gender, class, race, age, status, and occupation (and hid same of actor). The audience read costume codes to determine key facts about the entity (not the actor). The actor was invisible, found only in the heard voice and the active body within the costume.
Key note: when an entity died, the "body" was revealed onstage by only the mask and robe, empty. The spirit within (voice and body of the actor) had separated, flown away, dissipated, while the physical (outer) shell was left. This is as good an enactment (or explanation) of the mecanics of death as any I have witnessed. And dramatic: visual. Specific. Coded.
"Character," then, was revealed onstage by action: what an entity (costume) chose to do (and saying was doing) in reaction to forces, events or other entities. A fluid and effective way of thinking about character. This presumes two facts: first, the playwright must devise a steady, believable, and increasingly complex series of choices to put in front of said entity (in other words, a complex plot), and that the plot and character are intimately entwined. Each reveals the other to the spectator.
Entity without increasingly complex choices, actions, reactions, responses: boring.
Narrative without entities making complex, conflicted and interesting choices: boring.
When an event happens within the plot, caused by either another entity or a force from outside, the entity must choose how to react/respond, and by his choice he takes the plot forward a step. If the choice is inactive or offers only a sidestep to the plot, it doesn't belong.
Too often, as writers we get caught up in the physical appearance of the entities we imagine, rather than the inner landscape. Ths is a result of personality genres like TV and film, relying on known faces to sell thin plots. It is also easier, but as Aristotle warns results in superficial narratives. Not so good.
Two scenes to study. First, close to the end of the first part of Our Town, Dr. Gibbs sits down with his son George to talk to him about chores. Read the act all the way through this scene: at the end of it, what do you know about the entity of George, that you didn't know before? What choice does he make? What do you know about Doc Gibbs? What choices does he make? How has this talk (all action, by the way) changed the direction of Wilder's plot?
Second: Nora and Dr. Rank on the couch in Act Two of A Doll House. Ths is a pivotal scene, often overlooked. What do we find out about Nora? (hint: it is not one thing, but several) What do we find our about Rank? What major decision is made by Nora here? What do we find out about her as an entity that we did not suspect, really, before? How has Ibsen made Nora's chocie move the plot forward a step towards the inevitable conclusion?
Your only clues are the dialogue and stage directions. With both these playwrights, pay close attention to directions--they were men of theatre and knew actors, the stage space, and the power of live performance. Both are subtle moments filled with nuance. Aristotle's ideas are not out of date, they are still amazingly right about how theatre works as a live performative medium. By extension, his ideas also work for film, even though it is not live and relies too often on the visibility of the actor. This view of character will strengthen your writing and attract the best actors.
Pearl
Here they are, the two final reviews I promised from July's bounty of theatre-going in England.
First, the whole group went to see The Merchant of Venice in Stratford-on-Avon as done by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since the Swan is being renovated, we were in the Courtyard Theatre, a venue I had never experienced previously. It was, however, perfect: the set-up is like an indoor version of the outdoor theatres of Shakespeare's own time--except square and smaller, with no standing room. But audience on three sides, in three tiers, and very, very close... which gave the performance an intimacy I found helpful.
Shylock was played by Angus Wright, and he was marvelous. I liked that I didn't know him prior to this, because the intimate theatre and the role with a "name" actor would have been too much. He was very, very good, especially in his physical life. The tension of a man who is, in fact, persecuted but has also allowed that persecution to warp him was evident in Wright's every movement: this is a man who knows no peace. He refuses to be a victim, but he has become some kind of monster, albeit one who is intelligent, sensitive, and a better man than his tormentors.
Portia, played by Georgina Rich, and Jack Laskey as Bassanio, were a great couple. She was definitely the better actor, but it was interesting to watch them as a duo onstage. Bassanio's transformation from impulsive boy to mature man was particularly interesting, although the design somehow signaled this via his hair: at first, he had wild, curly hair that stood nearly on end, but as he wooed and won Portia, and then dealt with Antonio's crisis, it was smoothed down, in fact plastered via water or a Brylcreem equivalent to his head. Weird choice... especially in a production with such sophisticated design throughout. A rare misstep.
The overall design was modern, a kind of 1920s/30s combination for the clothing (pre-WWII? hard to say). Men in suits, women in stylish and constructed dresses, all in acid colors: rust, yellow, green, black. The theatricality of the play was given in careful and thus shocking bursts. Portia's caskets were ice-boxes--literally--that rose from the stage floor. When Bassanio guessed the correct one, all three broke open (or, on the ngiht we saw it, two, but it was understood). Portia herself, while the choosing was going on, appeared in a split in the back wall, in a white bridal gown flanked by icicles hanging from the ceiling. I missed the imagery of the icicles, but the visual was great, and the ice boxes effective.
An even more affective choice: at key moments, the front of the onstage balcony, at the rear of the stage giving a second level for performance, would rise about 6 inches, and an entire row of wineglasses appeared, some full of water, some half-full, some nearly empty. Invisible hands played this glass harp, fingertips circling the rims of some glasses causing an eerie set of layered notes. Twice, some of the glasses were filled, suddenly, with red liquid, obviously symbolising the blood being bartered for. Great visual and aural effect.
The stage was red and black, what looked like Chinese laquer. At strategic spots were irregular spreads of what I took to be water, which I thought was about late mopping of the stage. After they didn't dry (aha!) I realized they were meant to be bloodstains, although all the actors ignored them. Sitting in the second gallery over the righthand side of the stage, I had a bird's-eye view of one of the largest; from the floor, I couldn't have seen them.
In the court scene, when judgment is rendered and Antonio must give his flesh, a "table" rose from the stage floor, on which Antonio was laid out, shirtless and ready for Shylock's knife. This allowed Shylock to get over him, suddenly huge and menacing, wiht a very big, very shiny, very sharp knife, ready to cut.... again, great visual for the theatrical moment.
I really liked this production, despite the fact that the first ten to fifteen minutes were wasted by the actors and director. Yes, there is a lot of backstory, but commit to the fact that you've got to get the information to us or we'll be lost, as well as the fact that everyone onstage has a stake in what is being told: this ain't just blah blah blah narrative you can't cut! This is the difference between actors acting and actors judging what they think is good.
Also: it wasn't funny. The comedy of Gobbo: yawn. Again, no one seemed to figure out--to bother to figure out--why this scene and this character are part of the overall event. Sloppy. Shakespeare inserts comedy into tragedy for reasons of structure, timing, and effect: he knows what he is doing, pal, so don't ignore the signs.
And, well, some bad blocking--like during Shylock's most famous speech (should he be upstaged by another character and hidden from audience view in the dark? Uh, I don't think so... even for "powerful" effect). And some weak casting: Antonio, Gobbo, and Jessica, most dreadfully.
Overall: a really inventive reimagining of this story that made me think about Shylock--as well as Antonio and the othr citizens of Venice--in new ways. Without a lot of compromise, it was intelligent and theatrical.
In a very different way, King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London was also delightful. Only about half the group saw this one, and most liked the RSC production better. I suspect that was about the sound: it was as always difficult to hear everyone's dialogue in this outdoor theatre.
This was a traditional Lear: Dominic Dromgoole played Lear, and the production wound itself around him beautifully, in a series of costumes and set pieces straight out of Elizabethan London. Dromgoole, on the night we saw him, was alternately loud and medium-loud in his speeches, which let a lot of the significant parts drift away on the wind. Trystan Gravelle as Edgar was quite good, as was Paul Copley as Kent and Danny Lee Wynter as the Fool.
Not a brilliant or surprising production, the performance was solid. I can say little more about it, other than the eye-gouging of Gloucester was one of the best I have seen. I dwell on this gory moment, because it is a key to whether the actors and director are doing theatre or some reverent homage to the playwright. The less bloody, the less center-stage this moment is, the more the play is about revering Shakespeare and the less about understanding his skill as an artist of the theatre. It is a horrifying moment: Cornwall and Regan--giving free rein--allow the monsters within them full rein: it is a devastating look as power run amok and the horror that one human being (apparently civilized) can inflict on someone helpless, simply because they can... To shy away from that is to shy away from everything Shakespeare is.
So I like my Shakespeare gory and awfully visual, as a reminder. And this one was, satisfyingly so.
Pearl
Links: King Lear at The Globe, London; The Merchant of Venice at RSC, Stratford-on-Avon
Glenn Close and Zeljko Ivanek won Emmys for Damages: Outstanding Actress and Outstanding Supporting Actor, Drama Series. Deservedly so!
If you haven't yet seen this FANTASTIC series about lying, cheating, vicious, two-faced, nasty liars who are also lawyers... do so. And, by the way, get the entire series before you sit down. Don't let Netflix hold you up for the next disk: you could explode before it arrives, wondering what those malicious, cheating, lying, hateful, duplicitous, dirty, rotten folks are up to.
The writing, the plotting, the cinematography, the directing, and the acting are masterful: some of the best I've seen on television in the last decade. Did I mention the acting and the writing? In case I didn't: they're great. Right up there with Deadwood, The West Wing (Sorkin years), Sports Night (the first seasons), Dexter, and The Closer. Good company, in fact. Mad Men beat them out for writing and directing, but I think Damages is better: sharper, funnier, and scarier. Patty Hewes would mop up the floor with those poor ad men and leave them feeling as if she just spiked their pitcher of gin martinis with a nifty hallucinogenic, all without putting a smudge on her Tod's loafers (spoiler!)... or at least that's how I felt at the end of most every episode.
My questions were not answered until the final 15 minutes of the series: seriously, DO NOT WAIT FOR THAT LAST DISK!
Close is brilliant in this, as is Ivanek (long under-rated as a character actor seen everywhere), Ted Danson (positively na-asty), and Tate Donovan (perfecting his "weak guy" role). Run out now: throw a trenchcoat over your underwear (second spoiler!) and search the streets. Rent it, buy it, see it.
Revel in the duplicity of people who don't currently run our government: this is fiction.
Pearl
More reviews from July theatre-going in London.
PYGMALION by George Bernard Shaw (Old Vic Theatre). Peter Hall's leadership at the Theatre Royal Bath had been particularly fruitful in terms of comedy during the last year. First, he staged THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Wilde, which I did not see but which got rave reviews in Bath and London, followed by PYGMALION, which I did see. And dragged my summer class to, during our long London break.
The performance and the production was delightful. Reviews were mixed, but frankly it was a treat to see Shaw handled so beautifully, with so much deftness and craft by seasoned players. Tim Piggott-Smith as Henry Higgins was masterful, capturing the character of the brilliant, self-absorbed linguist both vocally and physically. James Laurenson as Colonel Pickering and especially Una Stubbs as Mrs. Pearce and Barbara Jefford as Mrs. Higgins were superb foils for Piggott-Smith. It is obvious especially that the two women in his life are familiar with and "handle" the antics of this middle-aged adolescent as best they can. Whenever three of these four actors were onstage at once, Shaw's language and wit flew back-and-forth, catching fire in the hands of such an experienced director and his actors.
I was really impressed by Michelle Dockery as Eliza: it must have been daunting at times to be the youngest member of this cast. Dockery held up her end admirably, however, and the scenes between Higgins and Eliza came to life in ways I had never seen. Shaw does the actress who plays Eliza no favors: she must handle not only difficult dialect and language work, but many of her scenes could seen merely reactive, given the power of Higgins to command center stage (and in the hands of Piggott-Smith, Higgins was a force to reckon with everywhere!). Dockery's gradual (and less flashy) character arc was painstakingly built, however, and her final scenes carried the impact of Eliza's very real dilema (a problem Shaw intentionally does not resolve, by the way, no matter what MY FAIR LADY suggests).
Throughout, in fact, the dialogue, dialects, and all verbal work were meticulously attended to, with the result that this version of Shaw forced spectators to listen more than watch (rare, any longer in contemporary theatre where intelligent dialogue has been forsaken for effect). This was Shaw as it should be, and the impact of his message was clear as crystal.
If you closed your eyes, though, you would miss the delights of Simon Higlett's sets (especially Higgins' at-home library) and Christopher Woods' period costumes. And the choreography (I cannot call it simply "blocking") of Sir Peter Hall.
Piggott-Smith's antics alone with his library sofas and slippers were priceless: he sat, slouched, laid, fidgeted, perched, crashed, and flung his body about in every way possible. This was no decorous period classic, but a dynamic performance piece about class, gender, and nonconformity.
I also have to give credit to Matt Barber as Freddie Eynsford-Hill: in every way, Barber created a Freddie who was the polar opposite of Higgins, and such a witless charmer. If these are the two choices Eliza has before her, we understand how she might give her hand (if not heart) to Freddie.
Finally, a last kudo to the final moment of the play. After Eliza delivers her declaration and walks out, empowered by her native intelligence and Higgins' teachings, Higgins remains, sitting in his mother's parlor. There was a long moment where we watched him--finally!--come to a recognition of what he has done... and lost... a long, silent pause as the lights just as slowly fell and Piggott-Smith's face and body registered... everything.
Beautiful work among a young actress, a seasoned actor, and a director unafraid to leave his audience hanging, without the nice, safe bow so popular now.
HER NAKED SKIN by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (National Theatre). This production was ground-breaking because it was the first production by a living female author to have its world premiere in the Olivier, the National's largest space. That the National combined this with a play about the fight for women's suffrage makes the event somehow ironic, without intention. You go, girl!
Lenkiewicz's play focuses on one group of women suffrigists in 1913, who inserted what we might call terrorism into their fight for the vote. Tired of the being ignored, certain radical factions within the movement and took the motto "Deeds Not Words." They stepped up their campaign by adding violence to the battle: breaking shop windows, pouring acid on golf greens, cutting telephone wires, attacking art works, and burning empty buildings. At the same time, forced feedings and worsened conditions in prisons, as well as the "cat and mouse" legislation passed in 1913, increased the danger of being a jailed suffragette.
Unfortunately, the facts are more compelling than Lenkiewicz's fictional plot.
The main characters are Celia Cain, an upper-middle-class wife and mother; William Cain, her husband; Eve Douglas, a young shopgirl who Celia meets in the movement; and Florence Boorman, an older woman dedicated to the suffragist cause. Immediately, I must say it was Susan Engel as Boorman who stole the show, although her role is relatively minor.
Celia is the main character, a woman trapped in a marriage from which love has slipped away, mother to children she doesn't seem to know or care about much, without any real meaning in her life. We follow her from violent act to prison to home to fling with Eve to fling with another man to committee meetings. When Celia is in prison, it seems a welcome break (to her) from the boredom of her privileged life. The scene between Cain (played by Lesley Manville) and William (Adrian Rawlings) in her prison cell is one of the best and most painful of moments in the play. His visit is an obvious (and ironic) intrusion on her privacy and his gifts of books, flowers, and food unwelcome reminders of their relationship. Beautifully written and played.
In the larger view, however, I was never clear about Celia's conflict. She is unhappy, but unlike Boorman she does not seem empowered and passionate about her chosen road. She is most active in her pursuit of Eve. But even here, she doesn't seem seriously committed; while she obviously enjoys giving the bird to polite society (in part by having an extra-marital affair with a lower-class and younger woman), she does it without risk while clinging to her privileges. Manville does a fine job, but in the end Celia is hardly the postergirl for the suffragette movement, and she never grabbed my sympathy. She is just another bored housewife dabbling in a cause and toxic to those around her. That her harm is unintentional only makes her sins worse.
I found the design intense: the set by Rob Howell managed to make the Olivier's huge stage both intimate and vast at once. The play moves through a series of short scenes in a variety of places (Celia's home, Eve's flat, the House of Commons, a park, a hotel room, a street in London) but looming over it all was the row of cages representing Holloway Prison. These cages hung over the set, rotated to show the back or front of the row, and generally reminded me that this story was more serious than Celia's ennui. The smaller spaces rolled in and out beneath without distraction. Beautifully done. Costumes were period-specific and effective, but functional.
In the end, I was unaffected even by the scene of Eve being force-fed. (How could that be possible?) How much more effective if it had been Celia finally confronting the consequences of her actions and her semi-commitment. Eve is a secondary character, who has no internal conflict and is only a reaction board for Celia's emotional games. She never gets her own, separate arc. In the hands of a young actress (Jemima Rooper) this becomes a bigger problem than it is for Boorman/Engel, who also has no individual story but has the craft to make her every moment onstage gripping, vocally and physically.
And here it is the first moment of the play--poorly staged to be sure but effective--that held me. In 1913 Emily Wilding Davison ran out in front of King Edward's horse at the race course at Epsom, on Derby Day. She was trampled, and the event was captured on film. In the prologue of the play, we see this film and Davison's "preparation" for her suicidal act. Unfortunately, the character of Davison never appears onstage again and is dead by the second scene. Her authentic struggle (hunger strikes, forced feeding, imprisonment, being attacked with prison water guns, and militant acts of arson) is immediately erased and replaced by Ceclia's so-so story of boredom. I wish Lenkiewicz had focused on Davidson, or at least a character with passion and commitment, rather than a privileged woman who whines her way through two hours plus.
Coincidentally: HER NAKED SKIN takes place in 1913-14, right before WWI buried suffrage in its horrors, and PYGMALION was originally staged in 1914, when it lost much of its premiere impact due to the first days of WWI. Both plays are about class, gender, and take up the inequities of women within a world run by men who dismiss them but it is Shaw, not Lenkiewicz, who delivers the real knockout blow to old ways of thinking and the cruelty of those in power toward those "beneath" them. Or perhaps Lenkiewicz means us to judge Celia as harshly as Higgins.
Pearl
Links: The Guardian review of PYGMALION, The Times on PYGMALION , Whingers on HER NAKED SKIN, CurtainUp on Her Naked Skin
