Travelzone is often on the edge of exhaustion and confusion. What time is it? Where am I going next? Where am I staying? How long? When do I need to get to the next stop?
Once those questions are answered (and phone alarms set), the process of relaxation and taking in the local areas begins. Sites are seen. Walks taken.
Strolling through Stratford Upon Avon past Shakespeare’s birthplace, school, church, “New Place,” and burial site, I can’t escape the feeling that playwrights in this part of the world have an impossible task. The phrase, “You’re no Shakespeare” is utterly and completely true. Actors have it slightly better. They get to say the words. In the RSC shop, Judy Dench (Dame Judy) has a book called “Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent.”
I got tickets for three plays, and enjoyed one of them immensely.
As You Like it was staged outdoors in bright sun with next to no set, and a cast of brilliant actors who entered playing a lively bluesy intro. Music came from everywhere. Clarinet, saxaphone, violin and guitar. Yes, everything was mic-ed. But the mix was clean from speakers hung over the stage, so the sound came from the zone they were playing in. And play they did. Did they cut it? Yes… but really it was tailored to fit. The show was drastically abbreviated. 85 minutes from overture to final bows. I loved it. The energy. The movement. At the start (before the music) someone came onstage and announced that one of the actors had been injured… (hush and worry from the audience) but he was a trooper and would soldier on. However the fight scene would have to be a one-man affair. Cue the applause. Cue the music, and the romp began.
What I loved was the way the actors actually talked to each other using Shakespeare’s words. Because of the (bespoke) chainsaw cuts, there was no rush to get out all the words. They could talk and listen and even (gasp!) react.
In the two other shows I saw, Richard Sheridan’s A School for Scandal and Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, there was always a rushing about to get from scene to scene, line to line, monologue to monologue. Timing. Pace. Hurry up people! (When is the interval?). Both of these plays were tedious. Possibly because I was tired. Possibly because I saw one from The Stalls (balcony) and the other from behind a post. But in both productions I noticed that the audience front and center was laughing a lot more than the audiences on the sides and upstairs.
For me, School for Scandal was interesting only when they broke out of the play and spoke to the audience. The set changes were delicious but all faff and glitter. The acting was fine, but the people in this play were just… boring. Didn’t care about any of them. I dozed. Woke. Dozed some more. At the interval, I jumped up from my seat, left, and ran to the Stratford Alehouse for some of the most delicious Porter I’ve had in years.
Merry Wives of Windsor was equally numbing. The pole in front of my £16 ticket might have been ok for an ardent and impoverished Bardophile. I found myself leaning this way and that, wondering if I was sticking my head in front of the polite person on my left. Bill's language and conversation was better than Dick’s, but again these people were mostly reprehensible. Maybe if it had been played as the Real Merry of Windsor - upping the cruelty… Nah, I still would have hated it. All the rushing and babbling. Most of the laughs were around the words not because of them. And again, the mechanicals of the set were snappy, but it was simply a backdrop. Didn’t need it. Again, I left at the break and raced to the Alehouse for more of that yummy porter.
Thank goodness for As You Like It. It reminded me how wonderful, delightful, exciting and brilliant live theater can be. (By the way, the reviews in the uk press all criticized how much was cut). I laughed and grinned throughout, and at the end, much to my surprise, found myself tearing up at the happy ending. Yeah, I’m that guy.
We American creatives are fortunate in our newness and arrogance. There are buildings here that were standing before Columbus set sail to find the New World.
We are unfortunate in our reliance on the auto, and the (somewhat improving) quality of our beer.
More to come.
– Mark
