Carla the magnificent.
Shakespeare, Love, etc.
So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
— Wm. Shakespeare
What’s wrong with that, I’d like to know?
— P. McCartney & Wings.
Shakespeare’s in residence at Playhouse on the Square? Soft, it is not so. Yet, ’tis.
It’s a neat trick too, really, more subtle and, for us groundlings, all force-fed some narrow selection of the canon, it’s certainly more attractive and accessible than the heady, sweet-and-sour buzzlepoxes Tom Stoppard‘s known for. But no less impressive since, with the original film version of Shakespeare in Love and its faithful, less beloved stage adaptation Stoppard, sweetening the existing work of career screenwriter Marc Norman, helped to construct a perfect star-filled galaxy where comets, greater and lesser planets, and moons of all kind are drawn together and blown apart according to the usual rules of attraction.
It sounds silly to describe Shakespeare in Love as a love letter — trite, at least. But that’s exactly what it is. And it’s not so much a letter to Shakespeare, or to the theater itself, as it is a big ol’ sloppy, muddy, faintly poopy-smelling Renaissance Faire of a love letter writ in iffy posey to the big ol’ sloppy, muddy, poopy-smelling and collaborative-whether-we-like-it-or-not process of making the play a thing. (See what I did there?) It’s kind of like that old Schoolhouse Rock song about how bills become law, only this story’s more fictitious than personified, imagining, with some loose attention to historical detail, how Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Ethyl, the Pirate’s Daughter made its way from vague concept to the LONDON STAGE! And how it picked up a considerably better title along the way. It’s a lightly flipped middle finger to all the classist fools wasting their time and ours trying to figure out who really wrote all those plays ascribed to the poor son of a country glover, showing us, with sympathy, good humor (and maybe even a little disgust), how plays are brought into the world like children — As the saying goes, it takes a village.
But really and for real Shakespeare in Love‘s just a silly love song with maybe too much dancing and a bit about a dog.
Mystery Play: ‘Shakespeare in Love’ is Lovely, Lovable, Silly…
In the same way Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead — a play about playmaking — loses something even in its thoughtful adaptation to the screen, and Young Frankenstein — a movie about moviemaking — makes no (okay, precious little) sense as a Broadway musical, Shakespeare in Love makes a natural home on stage, and good actual and symbolic use of tight ensemble acting. La Paltrow‘s just not necessary, though star power is maximized in POTS (literally) glowing production, when local treasure Ann Marie Hall (TM) is trotted out in the person of Elizabeth I, wearing neon orange hair and stunning dresses, wide as ol’ Peterbilt, bumper to hitch.
London’s swinging show-business community finds theater people mixing with tavern people mixing with business people and faintly criminal elements including Royalty. Will Shakespeare’s bouncing ideas off master-brainstormer Kit Marlowe while vain actors and barely legitimate producers and everyday whores, most of whom aren’t literally sex-workers, collude and compete in an environment where fresh material’s gold and there’s never any profit.
For the serious nerds it’s a place where young master John Webster watches from the sidelines honing a gift for imaginative revenge plots.
In an uncharacteristic, weirdly laudable movie-move, the Disney pictures crew adapted Shakespeare in Love from screen to the stage without turning it into a musical. Or, not exactly a musical anyway. There are songs and revels and such but, for the most part, it’s allowed to be exactly what it is and I’ve only got one real complaint about POTS’s production. There needs to be a turkey-leg vendor out front.
With all that period drag, and cool Barry Lyndon-ish lighting conjuring up candlelight, I don’t think one can underestimate the power of reality augmented by that special Turkey Leg Smell (TM) — I’m only half kidding.
Director Irene Crist leans on the live-ness of the show and the joys of stunty ensemble acting. When actors corpse over a barking dog’s over-the-top antics, you’re right there with them.
Jordan Nichols takes on the unhappily married poet/opportunist Will Shakespeare. His scenes with Jacob Wingfield’s Marlowe crackle with camaraderie as and his scenes with Jamie Boller’s Viola pulse with joy. Gabe Beutel-Gunn ably transforms Lord Wessex, the man to whom Viola is promised, into a weirdly Disney-esque villain, who always seems like he might just burst into a chest-thumping song — “Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain she sings as sweetly as a nightingale!” And so on. Such an interlude really wouldn’t be THAT out of place in a lively script where so many of Shakespeare’s words make winking cameo appearances already.
There are historic rationales for why women weren’t allowed to appear on stage in Shakespeare’s day but I’ve always thought — with no basis whatsoever — it was secretly because the best actresses always seem to eclipse their male counterparts. Sorry guys, it’s just so and Boller’s making my case. She’s got a good sparring partner in Nichols but her performance as Viola, and her be-trousered alter ego, is big and lovely and physical and filigreed with details that call to mind — and not a little — some of her director’s more Shakespearean turns. It’s like watching a younger incarnation of the recently retired (from acting) Crist, but it’s not remotely an impression. It’s a star-turn, though no less commanding than Boller’s last outing in Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties.
POTS’s ensemble is tight enough, top of the ticket to fifth-business. To borrow from Dr. V. Frankenstein, it’s alive. That makes all the fuss of going out and buying tickets to consume material you could totally rent from iTunes totally worth it.
I’m not sure how that works, exactly. It’s a mystery.
Mystery Play: ‘Shakespeare in Love’ is Lovely, Lovable, Silly… (2)
