Talking Shakespeare Yksi (One)

Outer images from last Christmas, inner images from 2020 prep

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Christmas is a-coming – a few purchases have now been made (mincemeat mixed, Christmas cake being “fed” monthly, a few gifts have been wrapped….) I’m allowing Christmas to infiltrate my life in November having, in the sixty previous years, banned all thoughts until December 1st but in this Covidacious year I take pleasure however and whenever I can. (Full disclosure: Sally still wears The Christmas Crown and is entirely responsible for the spicy aromas of fruity baking.) One advantage of having a Royal Shakespeare Company membership is being granted access to resources giving insights into the ongoing bottomless chasm of Shakespeare exploration. During both lockdowns a number of actors are giving interviews under the title Talking Shakespeare and that is just what they did. I’ll post about them all in due course, a few at a time….

Greg Doran intervewing Adjoa Andoh, Ray Fearon, Judi Dench and Alex Gilbreath

Adjoa Andoh and Ray Fearon

• Adjoa Andoh, known for Doctor Who and Casualty, is known to me especially for two stunning performances: as Ulysees in Troilus and Cressida and as an astonishing Richard II in an all-black, all-female production of Richard II at The Globe. Her interview ranged widely over all her Shakespearean roles but, most powerfully, about her personal life and commitment to community work.
• Ray Fearon revealed how he fell into acting by accident and started performing in amateur community projects. He was inspired when working as an extra in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money to (successfully) apply for Rose Bruford drama school. He worked at Liverpool Everyman and Manchester’s Royal Exchange before rising through the ranks at both the RSC and the National Theatre. His big breaks at the RSC came in a touring production of Romeo and Juliet and then (his third) Othello with the frisson of his Desdemona being played by his Juliet, Zoe Waites. He gave a moving account of his experience playing Pericles, a magnificent performance that stuck in my own mind when I saw it, and then talked about the sensational all-black Julius Caesar when he played a scarily dangerous Mark Antony.

Adjoa Andoh in Richard II and Troilus and Cressida, Ray Fearon in Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet and Othello

Judi Dench and Alexandra Gilbreath

• Judi Dench revealed herself to be the trooper she is and went the furthest back in time to her childhood in York and her early appearances at the Old Vic before marking off virtually all of Shakespeare’s heroines in her 70-year career. She talked about some of her legendary performances with typical humility – and plenty of funny anecdotes – but came up to date with her recent stage work that I’ve been lucky enough to witness live, in Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merry Wives (musical) of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale.
• Alexandra Gilbreath’s throaty tones have always drawn me in to her performances and she was enthusiastic and insightful about her major roles, all of which I saw in Stratford: Hermione (The Winter’s Tale), Juliet, Rosalind (As You Like It) Kate (The Taming of the Shrew), Olivia (Twelfth Night) and, alongside Judi Dench, in the musical version of Merry Wives.

Judi Dench in Macbeth, Merry Wives, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Alex Gilbreath in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale

Summer's Lease

Alex's afternoon tea and Morris Dancers in Badby

The world’s mine oyster
I’ve written elsewhere (see here) about how some places that are not officially home can feel like home. And so it was that August’s end contained a family visit to collect me from my week of bachelor vice…. the vice of glutting…. glutting on productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and soaking up interesting views by leading academics and theatre-makers at the annual RSC summer school. My first attendance at this event was in 1986, the year The Swan theatre opened and, although I haven’t been every single year, I’ve been more often than not. 32 years ago I was one of the whippersnappers and now I blend in seamlessly with the silver-haired and reverend Shakespeare fanatics.

RSC summer school and the 2018 Macbeth

Something Wicked This Way Comes
You need afternoon tea (thank you, Alex!) and the English/Moorish oddities of Morris Dancers tinkling their bells after such a marathon experience. After descending into the maelstrom of darkness that was a Time-dripping creepy Macbeth with Niamh Cusack, Christopher Eccleston, Edward Bennett, Luke Newberry, Michael Hodgson as Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Macduff, Malcolm and the Porter. After hearing challenging views about Macbeth and other plays and hearing from actors, including Alexandra Gilbreath who reflected on her previous performances and performed alternative versions of speeches.

2018 Romeo and Juliet to die for and Merry Wives of Windsor relocated to Essex

The Long and the Short of it
I thought Romeo and Juliet was a fine production, a believably youthful portrayal of the madness of early love (Karen Fishwick and Bally Gill) and performances by Andrew French and Ishia Bennison as Friar Lawrence and The Nurse that revealed their charismatic attractiveness but awful culpability in the tragedy that unfolds. The Merry Wives of Windsor was a different TOWIE kettle of fish – anchored by Ishia Bennison (again, as Mistress Quickly), Beth Cordingly, Rebecca Lacey and Jonathan Cullen as Mistress Ford, Mistress Page and Dr Caius but (happily for me) dominated by David Troughton’s Sir John Falstaff. There were more laughs than there probably should have been because of the skills of the actors (and the stunning Lez Brotherston’s set and costume designs) – but there will be other productions of this extraordinary play in years to come. A fitting quotation for both Romeo and Juliet and Merry Wives of Windsor is one of my favourite Shakespeare lines, a bit lost in the cartoon-world of this enjoyably shallow production:

O powerful Love, that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some other a man a beast.

Tamburlaine the Great, the play that unleashed Marlowe's mighty line

To be direct and honest is not safe
And so to Tamburlaine the Great, Marlowe’s two plays wrestled into one evening by ex-artistic director Michael Boyd with career-boosting performances by Jude Owusu and Rosy McEwan as Tamburlaine and Zenocrate. This was a hypnotic, careful, terrifying ensemble production with stunning music (James Jones) and evocative designs (Tom Piper with lighting by Colin Grenfell) and the whole cast should be applauded for their commitment to bringing the “scourge of the world” to full realisation. As if the RSC summer school glut of productions was not enough, I then indulged with Michael, my Shakespeare buddy, in a double-bill visit to Shakepeare’s Globe on London's South Bank to see strong productions of The Winter’s Tale and Othello. I’m often criticised for being too positive about life and always seeing the good in things – but although there were things I could carp about (certain lines, certain moments, certain perverse decisions) I always remember what it’s like to stage a production (in my 32 years of teaching) and try to appreciate at least what they were trying to do. (Hard to forgive the shit bear! in Winter’s Tale – but a pure revelation (to me) to have a black Michael Cassio in Othello. Mark Rylance, of course, was a devastatingly affable and disingenuous Iago – and I genuinely mourned the loss to the world at the death of André Holland’s Othello.

London's South Bank and Othello and The Winter's Tale

Exciting times

July memories with Harriet, Chris, Emily, Alex from Badby, Sally and random daleks

That was July and this is August
Yes, another brief blog, but, then again, loved ones tell me some people only look at the pictures anyway…. which is fine. So, yes, the 2018 summer heatwave continues (gorgeous weather or the beginning of our planet’s final descent into a cosmic inferno of global warming? Who knows? Time will tell.) My eldest daughter celebrated her July birthday in fine style in beautiful places and doing cool things and is plotting the next stage of her life (what will happen? Who knows? Time will tell.) I’ve been revisiting my past notes on Merry Wives of Windsor and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays in anticipation of this year’s Royal Shakespeare Company Summer School (my manly vice.) And I’ve been receiving feedback from my beta readers (thank you, all) on the (6th ? draft) of Raydan Wakes, the first book in the trilogy Rhenium Tales on which I’m doing my final feedback-fuelled revisions. Plots for all three books are sewn up, the website is almost ready to be released to the world, so that’s one item on the bucket list that can be ticked off. (Will an agent champion it? Who knows? Time will tell.) Exciting times.

top page of the soon-to-be-released website about my trilogy....

"Come Crush A Cup Of Wine"

First and Second Elizabethan Ages - "Tavern Brawls"

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking*

(* Cassio from Shakespeare’s Othello)
In my previous blog I sung the praises of BritWit extraordinaire, Adrian Smith, enthusiastic oenophile. It was easy to celebrate the wine-tasting experience by recalling Shakespeare quotations about drinking, given his plays are riddled with references to quaffing. Alcohol is everywhere. I’ve known plenty of people in my life who struggled (and struggle) to moderate drinking. And I’ve never been one to preach since I’ve got my own over-eating disorders and addictions. Modern society is rife with the tussle to control consumption, whether of material goods or of addictive food and drugs.

Nights out that didn't end so well....

Thou'rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink*

(* Sir Toby Belch from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night)
I know I drank too much beer and lager as a teenager and sometimes also at university. Some weekends now definitely involve way too much wine, but the fact is that “crushing a cup of wine” (as the Capulet servant invites Romeo to do) is a very sociable and enjoyable thing to do. Throughout history and literature, wine (and beer) have been constant presences in British life.

Come, I will go drink with you*

(* Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff)
I included an image of the gloriously ignominious and indisputably English Falstaff at the end of the last blog. He only appeared in three of Shakespeare’s plays and his death is described in a fourth. (Falstaff appears in Henry IV Parts One and Two as well as in The Merry Wives of Windsor and his death is described by Mistress Quickly in Henry V.) Falstaff certainly dominates Shakespearean images of drinking.

Paola Dionisotti as Mistress Quickly and Antony Sher as Falstaff

The loyal Mistress Quickly even subscribes drink to improving his health and temper, though, alas, she recognizes he has had too much in Henry IV Part Two:

MISTRESS QUICKLY (to Falstaff): I' faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality: your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire; and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any rose, in good truth, la! But, i' faith, you have drunk too much canaries; and that's a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say 'What's this?'

Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly and Simon Callow as Falstaff

Drink a health to me*

(* Petruchio from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew)
There are many “feasts” in Shakespeare that involve wine (Romeo and Juliet springs to mind) but there are a few key scenes where the drinking starts in a light-hearted way but leads to horrible consequences for one or more of the characters. Timon’s guests eat and drink to financial disaster in Timon of Athens. Trinculo and Stephano get Caliban blind drunk in The Tempest.  Lepidus is the butt of the Romans’ jokes in Antony and Cleopatra’s drinking scene, though it marks a deeper humiliation for Octavius too.

Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Othello and Timon of Athens

I'll drink no more than will do me good*

(* Mistress Quickly in Henry IV Part Two)
Did the actor who first played Octavius in Antony and Cleopatra also play Cassio in Othello since that scene’s drunken military orgy, orchestrated by Iago, portrays a similarity between what happens to Octavius and the downfall of Cassio – a man desperate to fit in with “the lads” who then drinks too much and suffers later. Did Shakespeare get carried away once too often in the taverns of Stratford and London? Did drink pay a large part in the accidental death/murder/assassination/skirmish in Deptford that ended Kit Marlowe’s life? The scenes in Antony and Cleopatra and Othello are such vivid lad-drinking scenes that Shakespeare must have experienced out-of-control drunkenness in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

The death of Christopher Marlowe - "a Great Reckoning in a Little Room"

These clothes are good enough to drink in*

(* Sir Toby Belch from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night)
Falstaff’s nearest rival for Top Drunk in Shakespeare’s work is Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. Toby utters the immortal line to the Puritan Malvolio who tries to stop the drunken revelry:

TOBY BELCH (to Malvolio): Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

The old reprobate, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Nigth

There is no doubt the audience are on Toby Belch’s side at this point in the play, even though the sound of drunks when you are trying to get to sleep can be disturbing. As with every theme he covered, Shakespeare presents two sides to the human condition – “good company, good wine, good welcome/Can make good people” is the belief of Guildford in Henry VIII. Cassio in Othello has another perspective on alcohol: “O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!”

Drinking Philosophy 

by Terry Pratchett’s Death and Albert:

Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."
Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.”

Death and Terry Pratchett and an idyllic view of drinking....

My First Shakespeare

Most prolific movie screenwriter

William Shakespeare’s work, 450 years after his birth, generates a significant amount of income for the nation, yes, even in times of recession – ticket sales and hotel bookings in and around the Globe Theatre in London and at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon have not fallen in recent years. His work also generates significant amounts of income for many other countries on every continent. And as of today (October 2014) there are 1,151 films that carry his name in the writing credits on imdb; there’s no sign that this figure will stop rising; Shakespeare is by far and away the most prolific screenwriter in movie history, an industry that didn’t even exist when he was alive.

Globe Theatre shop on South Bank in London

Ker-ching!

Other artists have been inspired to choreograph ballets, compose operas and create musicals; inspired to paint pictures, craft sculptures, write spin-off stories; less literary companies have manufactured posters, pens, fridge magnets, mugs, t-shirts, soft toys and other merchandise, great and small. The UK tourist board has calculated that the county of Warwickshire owes over half a billion pounds a year to the tourism generated as a result of Shakespeare being born in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon (Stratford-upon-Avon itself attracts around £335 million.)

When was I first entranced?

On the bookshelf in the front room during my childhood in Wakefield there was:

• a set of encyclopedias
• a family Holy Bible
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints
• and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare

(complete with Fuseli plates.) I would pore over these tomes. I would read sections out loud for fun, even if I didn't entirely understand every word. It passed time (only three TV channels and no computers or smart phones in pre-digital age of course.) 

Fuseli plate of a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream

Tale of Two Teachers

But at school a teacher almost ruined King Lear by reading it bombastically from beginning to end, striding about the classroom, oblivious to whether or not his class was listening. Shakespeare by fruity verbal sledgehammer – the worst kind of teaching! Luckily York Notes gave me the confidence to pass the exam (and another teacher, Ken Payne, happily gave me an excellent introduction to Hamlet with plenty of activities and tasks and active on-your-feet drama, provoking a sense that the play was thrilling, funny, heartbreaking and relevant to a Wakefield teenager in the 1970s.)

 The Comedy of Errors, King Lear and Hamlet

Dromio of Ephesus

But it was at university in a production of The Comedy of Errors by David Phelan that the penny fully and finally dropped. And boy did it drop! I don’t know whether it was the “hair by Vidal Sassoon” (me and the other student playing Dromio of Syracuse were given curly perms) or the 1920's flapper music or the laughter generated by the audience – none of the ephemeral wonderments that are in the First Folio. But something about performing the play that year at that time of my life kindled a spark that has continued flaring. In retirement I will not be able to help myself delving further and deeper into the texts and context of this remarkable writer - "not of an Age, but for All Times." Happy times indeed!

That most "English" of Shakespeare's plays with Falstaff in merry mode