Twelfth Night

Directed by Paul Mason Barnes, Music by Jack Forbes Wilson
Great River Shakespeare Festival

If someone were to ask me what my favorite play is, I would have to place Twelfth Night near the top of my list. It is funny and thought provoking, demonstrating an interesting awareness of the plight of women, centuries before our own women's movement.

Viola survives a shipwreck and has to make her way alone in a strange land. Her first move is to disguise herself as a young man—knowing the danger of being an unprotected female. This danger hangs over the entire play, even as the play follows its comedic twists and turns.

On Shakespeare's stage, Viola would be played by a young male actor. And when the character Viola dresses as Cesario, the Shakespearian audience would have seen a boy playing a woman playing a man. This trope must have guaranteed a laugh as Shakespeare employs it in several of his plays, but nowhere better than in Twelfth Night. Another comedic element used by Shakespeare is that of separated twins. Viola's brother, assumed to have been lost, also lands in the same country and is, of course, mistaken for Viola's male form. Tarah Flanagan does a nice job playing Viola playing Cesario.

Perhaps the most memorable characters of Twelfth Night develop on side stories outside of the main plot of the odd love triangle that develops between Viola, Olivia, and Orsino. The part of Malvolio—the prudish servant to Olivia—tends to be one of the characters that gets remembered. Christopher Gerson gets the role in this production and handles it with humor and empathy. Malvolio's humiliation puts a damper on the play's ending festivities.

Twelfth Night also offers the trio of late night revelers, Toby Belch, Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria, played by Michael Fitzpatrick, Chris Mixon, and Laura Jacobs, who are also Malvolio's tormentors. The play allows these three talented actors to show off their comic prowess.

But the production is not just good because of strong individual performances, the production, as it does in Henry V, works as a whole. The lighting creates a rich set that reflects the leisurely indulgence of melancholy that exists in both Olivia and Orsino's dwellings. Olivia is playing at mourning her lost brother, and Orsino is playing at mourning his unrequited love for Olivia. The mood is supported with music,composed by the fabulous Jack Forbes Wilson. The music makes sense of Orsino's opening lines:

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it: that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again, it had a dying fall;
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and Giving odor. (I.i.1-7)

Corey Allen recites the line, reclining backwards to face the audience, with the singers poised to resume their song, and I quickly scribbled in my notebook: “Corey Allen is quickly becoming my favorite actor.” Everything works in that moment, saving the play from a confusing and clumsy prologue.

The Great River Shakespeare Festival is down to its last three days. For schedules and tickets for Twelfth Night, Henry V and Macbeth, visit GRSF.org.

July Theatre Shorts

The Great River Shakespeare Festival is into its last week with performances of Twelfth Night, Henry V, and MacBeth at full tilt.

Henry V

I wrote a review for the Winona Post, which tries to capture how much I liked the play. I think Henry V is the best piece of theatre in Southeast Minnesota this summer and well worth the three-hour investment. The production is top notch, and the play itself has a depth that left me thinking about the play long after leaving the theater.

For Tickets and more information, visit GRSF.org.

Great River Shakespeare Festival Preview

GRSF will unveil their 2011 season with a reception at Signatures Events Center in Winona.

The Preview event features music by Heart Strings Harp Circle light refreshments, cash bar, and raffle prizes. GRSF merchandise will be on sale, and attendees will be able to order tickets and purchase gift certificates for the 2011 season productions. Reservations are recommended but not required (507-474-7900, ext. 118). A $5.00 donation is suggested. The Signatures Event Center is at 22852 County Road 17 in Winona.

For more information go to grsf.org

Celebrity Sightings at GRSF

Kim Martin-Cotton, who played many of the lead rolls in the first 4 years of GRSF and swordsman Jacques Roy were in the audience for Tuesday night's Othello as well as Wednesday's production of Titus Andronicus. It feels like having old friends in the house, even though I've never really met either of them outside of the theater. Carla Noack, Rosalind in As You Like It and Kate in Taming of the Shrew, took in the apprentice play yesterday. (I also saw her at Othello earlier in the month.)

Commonweal company members David Hennessey and Eric Bunge took in Tuesday's Othello on their night off from a busy summer season in Lanesboro.

Has it come to this? No reviews at Minnesota Theatre, just gossip? No excuses—I simply haven't gotten the reviews out of my head and on to paper. Below, I have a preview of A comedy of Errors that I wrote in May or June but never got around to posting.

The Great River Shakespeare Festival ends Sunday, August 1.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

A Comedy of Errors—Preview

In this early comedy Shakespeare plays with twins separated during a shipwreck. This of course is a trope that he will return to in Twelfth Night. But in A Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare uses two sets of identical twins. Here is a brief summary of the setup:

A merchant couple from Syracuse had twin boys, both named Antipholus. At the same time, a poor couple also had twin boys, and the merchant couple naturally purchased the 2nd set of twins to help ease the poverty of the poor couple as well as to provide servants for their own sons. These servant twins also, remarkably, have the same name Dromio.

The family—father, mother, twin one, twin two, servant twin one, and servant twin two—is in a shipwreck. The father , twin one, and servant twin one are saved together and return to Syracuse. Twin two and servant two are saved together and end up in Ephesus. The mother is separated from all of them.

The pair of twins were quite young—babes even—at the time of the shipwreck. The young Antipholus II and Dromio II know little if anything about their families. They probably don't even realize that they have twins somewhere in the world (but somehow, they did know their names and know which one is master and which one is servant).

Many years have passed and both Antipholus I and Antipholus II have established themselves as merchants. Antipholus I (from Syracuse, ) knows of his brother and sets out on a 7 year's voyage to try and find him. After years of searching, he and his servant Dromio I arrive in Ephesus, the home of Antipholus II and his servant Dromio II. Everywhere Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse go in Ephesus they are mistaken for their brothers, even by Antipholus of Ephesus's wife and servants. In fact, they look so much alike that the Antipholuses and Dromios mistake their own master or servant.

But once beyond this set of unlikely coincidences the audience is rewarded with a richly complex play. At every turn it forces the characters and the audience to question reality: when strangers greet you by name and friends, servants, spouses insist that you have done (or omitted to do) things that you have no memory of, sanity and reality become relative.

While the play is certainly funny—Shakespeare has gone to great lengths to set up a series of gags, and from the promo video for the play GRSF intends to play for laughs—a serious cloud hangs over the play as well. The series of mistaken identities will have very real consequences for characters including false imprisonment, the breakup of a marriage and even death. I expect that this weighted mirth will make this both a humorous and significant evening of theatre.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Juggling Identities in a Repertory Company

The New York Times recently ran an article about New York's Shakespeare in the Park and the difficulties actors can have balancing two shows at the same time: "Shakespearean Juggling in the Park" In southeastern Minnesota, we tend to take these efforts for granted with repertory companies like the Great River Shakespeare Festival and Commonweal Theatre.

Scenes from Shakespeare in the Park (New York) productions of “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Merchant of Venice.” (Photographs by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

The Great River Shakespeare Festival gets under full sail tonight with a free concert by Nova Scotia Traditions at 6:30 and Comedy of Errors at 8:00.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

GRSF Season 7 Preview Event, March 21

The directors and designers of the Great River Shakespeare Festival will share their plans for the 2010 season at 4:00 on March 21 at Signatures restaurant in Winona. Along with presentations by the artistic and production staff, the event will have "savories & sweets, cash bar, live music, and conversation." There is a $5 suggested donation for the event.

The 2010 GRSF season will include Shakespeare’s Othello and Comdey of Errors, plus Jonathan Gillard Daly’s The Daly News.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Hamlet

by William Shakespeare, directed by Rick Barbour
Great River Shakespeare Festival Intern and Apprentice Acting Company (July 22, 2009)

The GRSF production of Hamlet provides a good reminder of what a great play Hamlet is. It’s also a good reminder of how well the entire GRSF company delivers Shakespeare’s texts. WSU’s black box theater exposes the actors on three sides of the stage—just feet away from the audience. There is little in the way of set pieces to hide behind, minimal lighting, minimal costuming, few props, and no exits. In fact, all the actors are on stage for the entire production. In this setting, the success of the play rests on the actors willingness to trust Shakespeare’s text and their ability to make Shakespeare’s language resonate.

Perhaps it is the language that is the strongest part of the apprentice production. Like all of the GRSF productions, these young actors are able to deliver Shakespeare’s lines with a precision and a cadence that is quite beautiful. Even during times when my mind may have wandered from the meaning of the words, I found myself enjoying the sound and the flow of the words—the company has achieved a certain musicality. And while it is easy to take the language for granted—it is Shakespeare after all, and these actors make it sound natural—the musicality must be the result of dedicated work with the text.

In an unusual choice, this production splits the role of Hamlet between four actors. While director Rick Barbour indicated that the decision to break up the role was largely a matter of sharing the work load and making sure that all the acting apprentices had significant roles to work on, the four-person Hamlet actually seemed quite natural. The four, JJ Gatesman, Kate Kremer, Dylan Roberts and Sarah Naughton, hold a certain unity in the role, even as each actor inevitably brings a unique personality to the person of Hamlet. I expected to be distracted by the changing, but like the rest of the play, it simply works, and different actors helped fill out the character. Hamlet is a very complicated and conflicted character—the different actors provided a subtle way to explore this complexity.

The acting in this production is strong from the major roles all the way down to minor characters. In the sixth year of the festival, Winona’s growing theater audience may take it for granted that all of the roles in a play will be played by very good actors. But this isn’t always the case in theater, and especially with Shakespeare’s plays, which tend to have large casts, most productions suffer a drop off in talent in the smaller roles. But because this cast is very talented, even the smaller characters maintain a high level of delivery. For example, Nicholas Munoz plays a powerful Fortinbras, worthy of a conquering general and future king of Denmark. Because Fortinbras’ entrance comes in the final scene of the play as most of the major characters lie dead on the stage, there often is not a powerful actor left to play him. (Munoz and nearly all of the other actors play two or more roles to cover the many and varied persons who appear on stage.)

In keeping with the black box nature of the play, the scenes are created by the actors on stage. Hamlet presents many challenges for settings, and the Intern and Apprentice company use simple and creative methods of meeting these challenges. From the night watch scenes to shipside and the graveyard, the company rises to the challenge of creating enough of an illusion of a space to move the story along. Much of this space and mood is established by on-stage vocalizations and simple instrumentation. This is particularly effective in the scenes where Hamlet’s ghost appears, but these types of sound effects are used effectively throughout the production. Additionally, Stephanie Lambourn’s musical adaptations and enacting of Ophelia’s “mad” songs are effectively disturbing and moving.

The Intern and Apprentice Acting Company’s production allows its audience to experience Hamlet in a way that really lets Hamlet shine. It is also a very good showcase of some young actors who are able to rise to the demands of one of the world’s great plays.

The GRSF Intern and Apprentice Acting Company’s production of Hamlet has three more performances:
Thursday, July 23, 3:00 p.m.
Friday, July 24, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, July 25, 3:00 p.m.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

The Tempest

by William Shakespeare, directed by Alec Wild
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 8, 2009)

The Tempest has traditionally been a hard play to categorize. It is often placed with a grouping of plays that are unsatisfyingly called romances. Included in this group are The Winter’s Tale, Pericles, and Cymbelin, which have all been produced by GRSF in the past years. Yet what can make these plays feel unsettling cannot be attributed entirely to their failure to follow structural expectations about comedy or tragedy. The romances ask an audience to suspend reality—using heavy doses of magic to move the plot. The Endings are often happy, if one can be satisfied with delayed happiness or too many lost years. And romances tend not to make a clear delineation between good and evil—evil often goes unpunished and characters are allowed to evolve and repent of their misdeeds. In contrast, in plays like Macbeth and Richard III, the protagonists are driven to evil by a lust for power. The audience can admire the plotting and action for their sheer audacity, yet the audience also understands that these men have reached too far and will get what they deserve.

The Tempest is surrounded by evil with the inclusion of a brother usurping a brother for a dukedom, a brother plotting against another brother for the crown, a plot for revenge, and the presence of witches, spirits, monsters, and magic. And yet, the audience doesn’t enjoy the clear satisfaction of knowing what or who is evil or of being assured that the evil characters will not prevail.

Michael Fitzpatrick as Stephano(eft) and Doug Scholz-Carlson as Tinculo in the Great River Shakespere Festival’s The Tempest.

Orchestrating the action of The Tempest stands Jonathan Gillard Daly as Prospero. Since being shipwrecked on the island 12 years earlier, Prospero has ruled the Island with an iron hand. He has enslaved the only inhabitant of the island as well as the spirits and nymphs who play and make music there. Through magic and diligence, Prospero controls time and circumstance. Daly’s role as Prospero is reminiscent of his powerful portrayal of Richard III in the GRSF’s second year. Like Richard, Prospero seems to relish the power inherent in manipulating people and events. Yet Daly’s Richard made the audience a conspirator in his clearly evil plot. While Daly’s Prospero makes similar confederacy with the audience, his motives and plans are more complex and harder for the audience to understand.

For example, Daly is not only the absolute ruler of the island, he is also the lone parent of the 15-year-old Miranda. And in the second scene where Prospero reveals to Miranda her birth identity, one wonders about his motives. Why has he waited all these years to tell her? Why does he check to see that she has little memory of Milan before telling his story? Why does he use magic to put her to sleep before finishing his tale? Is his affection for his daughter feigned like the affection Richard shows Lady Anne in Richard III? Does he love her, or is she just one more pawn to move in his complex plot?

The play begins under the spell of a tempest that Prospero has conjured to waylay the passing ship containing both King of Naples and Prospero’s brother. The shadow projection of the storm and the waves is both effective and delightful. The storm as well as the unlikely rescue from the storm are carried out by the island’s nymphs and spirits who are in Prospero’s service. These nymphs and spirits add a haunting feel to the play as they are always present, usually propped expressionless in the shadows of the set platforms wearing colorless body suits. Like Prospero, the nymphs and spirits seem menacing, yet they aren’t exactly evil. They are led by the spirit Ariel who is played by Tarah Flanagan. Flanagan presides over Prospero’s scheme as she flies over the island observing and intervening as necessary. On this set, Flanagan, with white hair flaming from her head, flies on the top of a tower near the center of the stage, even remaining aloft during intermission. While she is clearly in Prospero’s service—she is anxious to gain her promised freedom—there is a close bond between the man and spirit. Yet one wonders the same about Prospero’s feelings toward Areal as toward Miranda: does he really love this spirit, or is Areiel just one more pawn in his plans?

The set itself is made of cold metal and is usually darkly lit and inhabited by nymphs. The set platforms leave their steel trusses exposed and move on a cold steel rail. Even the island’s trees and plants are represented by metal pipes, which also serve as weapons. While this island is more like a prison to Prospero than a vacation resort, it seems a bit odd that an enchanted Mediterranean island, which has sustained Prospero and his daughter for 12 years, is presented as a cold, prison-like environment. The environment is a purposeful decision; the production clearly doesn’t want the audience to see the island as an appealing, pastoral setting.

One area where the island is allowed to lose its cool edge (while still maintaining its mysticism) is with music. Shakespeare has the spirits providing unexpected and often joyful music that both amazes and pleases the recently shipwrecked wanderers of the island. Composer Daniel Kallman brings these songs to life with a musical compositions that go beyond setting songs to music. The actors double as orchestra playing a wide variety of instruments, including rain drum, flute, viola, and hand bells. The music so perfectly fits the play that one easily forgets that it is not simply part of the air—even with the actors playing and singing on stage or in the semi-darkened upstage area. The music creates the storm, accompanies the singers, and helps to create the magic of the island.

Special note must be made of Caliban who often serves as a lightning rod for heated discussion about the play. Christopher Gerson answers the question of whether or not Caliban is human or monster with an almost unequivocal “monster” portrayal. Yet what is truly remarkable is that he convinces the audience that he is not human without use of any sort of monster costume (in fact, he is naked to the waist and wears no wig or mask). He seems unable to walk on two legs, seems to be in great pain when he speaks, and displays some unusually double jointed shoulder blades. And while the audience is likely to feel some sympathy for him, the slight deformities displayed by Gerson are enough evidence for Prospero, the new visitors to the island, and the audience that he is not human. Perhaps this is a good indication of how little deviation from the norm people are willing to allow before disavowing someone else’s humanity.

Sharing the stage with Caliban for much of the play is the jester, Doug Scholz-Carlson, and the drunk butler, Michael Fitzpatrick. Scholz-Carlson and Fitzpatrick display much of the same delightful impertinent playfulness that they showed in nearly identical roles in Twelfth Night in 2006 as the clown Feste, and Sir Toby Belch. Equally funny, but on the other end of the spectrum, Nicole Rodenburg plays Miranda with a devotion to her father and a winning innocence that matches Nick Demeris’s sudden and delirious devotion to her (despite the fact that he has just lost his father to the storm, he doesn’t know where he is, and Miranda’s father seems a bit mad.)

In his romances, Shakespeare asks his audience to be satisfied that happiness delayed—sometimes years later—is still worth while, that people can learn from the mistakes of their past, and that people can, after a time, forgive. But these requests are hard for an audience expecting a more timely revenge or repayment. The questions of who is good and who is evil still linger unanswered, and the play ends on the melancholy side of happiness. Even Prospero must remain on stage to ask the audience to be satisfied with the story and the ending, in short, to be satisfied with the fine acting, the powerful music, and the spectacular production. It’s not hard to follow Prospero’s injunction to “release me from my bands/ with the help of your good hands” and applaud at the conclusion of The Tempest (Epilogue 9 - 10). But long after leaving the theater, I’m still applauding the production for telling such a compelling story.

The Tempest plays in repertory with Love’s Labour’s Lost through July 26.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Minnesota Theatre Preview of Love's Labour's Lost

Love’s Labour’s Lost

By William Shakespeare, directed by Paul Barnes
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 7, 2009)

In many ways, Love’s Labour’s Lost may be a risky play for Great River Shakespeare Festival to take on. Shakespeare’s verbal gymnastics must hold the audience because there is little in the way of action or plot. Small, familiar plot devices serve merely as diversions: mixed up letters, love sonnets that fall into the wrong hands, a party where the revelers are masked, for example. But this production stands strongly on its verse, and Shakespeare’s verbal power and this company’s skill and charisma rise to the occasion and make Love’s Labour’s Lost a rousing success.

Chris Mixon (top) as Berowne and Andrew Carlson as Longaville in the GRSF production of Love’s Labour’s Lost

Love’s Labour’s Lost could be a Shakespeare skeptic’s worst nightmare: a play with seemingly endless Shakespearian speeches: no murders, no fights, no plotting for power, no forbidden love. And yet even a skeptic could quickly be drawn into the language of this production. Nearly all the dialog is in verse, and while the audience isn’t likely to recognize the sonnets and other poetry forms as they fly by, the incessant rhymes serve as constant reminders that the speeches and word play are largely constructions that allow the speakers to admire their own voices and their own wit. The sonneteers labor at their love with pen and tongue, yet they are more in love with themselves and their words than with the supposed objects of their affection.

At first blush, the GRSF staging of Love’s Labour’s Lost suggests the play will be a romp in the park. A lush green grass covers the center circle of the stage, and a simulated tree with pastel colored parasols for branches provides a fanciful pastoral setting. (And in bit of even more fancy, the parasols open early in the play and later close when the pastoral sporting must be set aside).

But while the King of Navarre and his court do their best to maintain their mirth and lover’s play, the seriousness of death surrounds the play. The bare, cold staging that surrounds the green of Navarre’s garden reminds the audience of the limits of play. The persistence of death is further reinforced by an interesting portrayal of the ill King of France personally handing his daughter the papers that she is to deliver to Navarre. This exchange happens quickly, in a pantomime that takes place as part of a sequence of song and character introductions before Shakespeare’s dialog begins. (The King of France never appears in Shakespeare’s play, yet the announcement of his death near the end serves as a critical turning point and a reminder of Navarre’s desire to defeat death by achieving fame in this life.)

Doug Scholz-Carlson as the King of Navarre tries to summon a seriousness that will meet death’s presence head on. Yet there is nothing about Scholz-Carlson and his followers that suggest seriousness—despite their serious oaths. They are dressed for sport in bright colors (in what seems to me to be a sort of 1900s country club look) even as they vow to three year’s study, fasting, and celibacy. Before the ink is dry on their vows, the men are bored and ready for diversions.

The diversion comes in two forms. The first diversion is the blundering verbosity of Christopher Gerson as the visiting Spaniard, Don Adriano de Armado. Gerson’s Spanish persona—complete with musketeer costume, sword and wig—does not disappoint. The other diversion comes by way of the Princess of France, Tara Flanagan, and her three attendants. Quickly, the King and his three men abandon their oaths and begin composing love sonnets in secret.

Chris Mixon as Berowne, one of the King’s men, does a wonderful job as perhaps the most verbal character in the play. His early speech explaining why it is unnatural to join the King’s school of fasting and celibacy temporarily alienates him from the King, but allys him to audience. He quickly appeases the King and agrees to sign with another poetical flourish punctuated with another rhyming couplet: “Give me paper, let me read the same, / And to the strictest decrees I’ll write my name” (I.i. 116-117).

While Mixon and the other men are serious about their sonneteering, Rosaline (Shanara Gabrielle) recognizes that these earnest men are not serious. Reprimanding Berowne, she tells him, “A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it” (V.ii. 861-863) For once in the play, Berowne is humbled and speechless. Berowne and the rest have clearly been jesting for their own amusement and making love oaths for the love of the sound of them.

And the same could be said for Shakespeare, since the incessant word play is his. This production of Love’s Labour’s Lost consorts with its audience to enjoy the irony inherent in Shakespeare’s overly verbose warning of the dangers of poetry and speechifying.

Love’s Labour’s Lost plays in repertory with The Tempest through July 26.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

GRSF Extra: The Daly News

Great River Shakespeare Festival actor Jonathan Gillard Daly, known to GRSF audiences for his work as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the title role in Richard III, among many others, will bring his play with music, The Daly News, to Winona for a special performance on Monday, July 13. All proceeds will benefit GRSF. This season Daly plays Prospero in The Tempest and Holofernes in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Gregg Coffin, composer of Love’s Labour’s Lost as well as 2005’s production of Much Ado About Nothing, collaborated on the music for The Daly News with Daly and Santa Maria, CA composer, Larry Delinger.

The Daly News tells the story of Martin Daly, Gillard Daly’s grandfather, who was a well-known Milwaukee banker. To keep his four sons connected to the family while they were serving in the military in World War II, Martin retired to the basement of the family home in Milwaukee each week where he edited and published a newsletter he called The Daly News. From 1943 to 1946, Martin mailed his weekly compilation of Milwaukee news and excerpts from his sons’ letters home to friends and other members of the family. Gillard Daly came across the newsletters years later and set to work turning them into a theatre piece, which was first performed at PCPA Theaterfest in California and later refined and adapted for production in the his family’s hometown, Milwaukee, WI.

July 13, 7:00 p.m. The Daly News: book and lyrics by Jonathan Gillard Daly, music by Gregg Coffin, Larry Delinger and Daly.

GRSF Apprentice and Intern Company: Hamlet

Another production to put on your calendar is the annual Apprentice and Intern production of Hamlet. The Apprentice and Intern Company play has been a popular ticket since its single performance in year one of the festival. In 2009, its production has expanded to five shows. The play is staged in WSU’s blackbox theater during the festival’s final week.

Hamlet

Tuesday, July 21, 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, July 22, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, July 23, 3:00 p.m.
Friday, July 24, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, July 25, 3:00 p.m.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Shakespeare Preview: Love’s Labour’s Lost

A comedy that shares much with A Midsummer Nights Dream, Love’s Labour’s Lost begins with a group of men worried about the short span of their lives. Determined to offset an individual’s ephemeral presence on the earth, King Ferdinand decides that the way to immortality is through significant achievement that will warrant remembrance in ages to come. His strategy for achievement is a curious one: his court will become a temporary hermitage where study and fasting will gain him the fame he seeks. Ferdinand is sure in his strategy:

Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;
Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art. I.i.12-14

As part of this edict, women will not be allowed near the court (with punishment worse for the woman who comes within a mile of court than the man who consorts with a woman). But even as the three lords attending the King swear to abide by the three-year’s fasting and study, the King is reminded of the expected arrival of the King of France’s daughter on a matter of serious state business.

Predictably, the Princess arrives with three attending ladies (nicely matching up with the three fasting lords) and ultimately exposing the academe as the silly bit of hubris that it is.

Aside from the matched lords and ladies, Shakespeare populates the play with a number of stock characters and situations for amusements, distractions, and merriment: a clown, a country wench, a conceited foreign fantastic, a play within a play performed by local rustics, and extensive word play.

But Shakespeare pulls back from providing the comedy that seems inevitable from the opening scene and uses the entrance of the women to shine a bit of reality on hasty oaths and the intrusion of death to re-examine insincere attempt at immortality. Instead of the ending the King and his men desire, Shakespeare provides the ending that they, and perhaps we, need.

Love’s Labour’s Lost plays in repetory with The Tempest through July 26.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Shakespeare Preview: The Tempest

As the Great River Shakespeare Festival points out in an article printed in the program (and included on its website), Shakespeare generally provides just about all of the relevant information required to enjoy the play in the opening scenes. This is certainly true in the Tempest’s opening scenes. But much of this information comes in a lengthy monologue given by Prospero to his daughter—a monologue that even Prospero senses could prove challenging to follow. Another challenge for the audience is keeping track of the large number of characters who enter the stage (and the previously sparsely populated island.) Having a general idea of who the characters are and how they are related to each other could be helpful. (The GRSF program lists the characters alphabetically by cast members last name. This practice is more egalitarian than the traditional hierarchy in a Shakespearean cast of characters: male royalty in order of title—king, dukes, then lords—the rest of the men, female royalty, the rest of the females. But the alphabetical list provides little help in grouping together characters on stage in any meaningful way.)

Following are groupings of the characters as they appear in the play:

Island Inhabitants

Prospero (Jonathan Gillard Daley) and Ariel (Tara Flanagan) in the Great River Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest.

Prospero (former Duke of Milan)
Miranda (Prospero’s teenaged daughter)
Caliban (An island native, slave to Prospero)
Ariel (an “airy spirit”)
Other spirits/nymphs

Prospero and Miranda took shelter on this tropical Island after a shipwreck, 12 years before the action of the play. Prospero had been the Duke of Milan, but was forced out by his brother (Antonio) with help from the King of Naples (Alonso). Prospero became “lord” of the island by freeing the spirit Ariel who had been imprisoned by a sorceress’s spell. The sorceress, Sycorax, had died before Prospero and Miranda arrived. Sycorax left a son, Caliban.

Survivors of Shipwreck—group 1

Ferdinand

The survivors of the shipwreck are separated during the wreck and come to the island believing that they are the only survivors. Ferdinand is the son of the King of Naples and is instantly attracted to Miranda (who is attracted to him as well).

Survivors of Shipwreck—group 2

Alonso (King of Naples)
Sebastion (the King’s brother)
Antonio (Prospero’s brother, now Duke of Milan)
Gonzalo (and old counselor to Antonio-had been counselor to Prospero)
Adrian (lord from Naples)
Francisco (lord from Naples)

The royalty wander the island believing that they are the only survivors from the ship and the only humans on the island. These royals were sailing home from the marriage of the King’s daughter to the King of Tunis. Now the king believes his son, and heir to the thrown, has drowned. Conveniently, all of Prospero’s enemies have landed on his island.

Survivors of Shipwreck—group 3

Trinculo (a jester)
Stephano (a drunken butler)

These two characters do little to further the plot of the play, yet they provide much in the way of Shakespearean humor. Besides, someone has to keep tabs on the ship’s stock of wine.

The Tempest and Colonialism

The Great River Shakespeare Festival’s production of the Tempest doesn’t deal with issues of slavery and colonialism according to the article in the program: “Some people hold that these [Colonialism and slavery] are the themes inherent in Shakespeare’s play; we don’t, but even if they were, you wouldn’t need to know much about them to have a rich and satisfying experience in the theatre.” And while it is true that a colonial (or post colonial) perspective is not necessary for a fine production of the play, this play may be Shakespeare’s only connection with those of us living in the western hemisphere, so it may be worth exploring this connection a bit.

The Tempest was written late in Shakespeare’s career, with the earliest performance on record in 1611.¹ By this time, English exploration by sea was well under way and the stories of interactions with native peoples were finding their way back to England. The Jamestown colony was established in 1607, and a 1609 shipwreck off the Bermuda Islands of a ship heading for Jamestown may form part of the story for The Tempest. Much of the crew survived the wreck, spent a year on an island in the Bermudas, re-built two ships, and made it to Jamestown.² It is likely that Shakespeare read the published accounts of the voyage and its year-long adventure on the island, including a description of the island that seems echoed in the play: “country so abundantly fruitful of all fit necessaries for the sustenation and preservation of a man’s life.”³

In addition to the stories of islands, Shakespeare would have known about captured Native Americans displayed in Europe as savages. According to Historian Ronald Takaki, English explorers continued Columbus’s practice of kidnapping natives and bringing them to Europe for display. ⁴ This practice is even referenced in The Tempest. When Stephano first discovers Calaban on the island, he alludes to the possibility of bringing the islander to Italy for profit: “If I can recover him and keep him tame and get to Naples with him, he’s a present for any emperor that ever trod on neat’s leather.” II.ii.64-67

Earlier in the scene, Trinculo comes upon the hiding Calaban and refers to the practice of making money from displaying natives, even using the name Indian. “A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man. Any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.” II.ii.27-32.

Because Caliban is most often grouped with the comic duo of Trinculo and Stephano, it’s unlikely that Shakespeare is making much of any type of political or social statement about the abuse of native peoples or the period of colonization that England is embarking on in the early 17th Century. But I do find it fascinating that a historical figure of Shakespeare’s stature, perhaps one of the greatest writers of English, was in some way a witness to the beginning of the clash between European and Native American culture—a clash that has betrayed our own national narrative of fairness and equality and a clash which continues to haunt the continent into the 21st Century.

While there is a connection to the new world of the Western Hemisphere, the Italian royals created by Shakespeare were not likely to travel this far west on their way back from Tunis. Instead the island is more likely located somewhere in the Mediterranean, and Shakespeare leaves Calaban’s ethnicity (and some might argue, humanity) ambiguous.

Notes
¹Hallet Smith. The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1997). 1656.
²Gerald Graff and James Phelan, editors. William Shakespeare. The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2000) 116.
³Graff and Phelan, 117
⁴RonaldTakaki “The ‘Tempest’ in the Wilderness,” in Graf and Phelan, 148 - 149.

The Tempest plays in repetory with Love's Labour's Lost through July 26.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Great River Shakespeare Festival, Season 6

Winona, Minnesota

The 6th season of the Great River Shakespeare Festival has begun with previews and openings of both plays, Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Tempest, occurring over the past weekend. Neither of these plays are on the list of “Shakespeare blockbusters,” if there were such a list, but they offer intriguing looks at Shakespeare early and late. Each play offers unique creative challenges for the actors, directors, and designers, but as with most Shakespeare, ample opportunity for physical comedy, romance, dramatic tension, clever wordplay, and theatrical spectacle.

In each of the preceding seasons, much local advertising has focused on the accessibility of GRSF’s presentations and the appeal of these plays to a broad cross section of Minnesotans, even to Joe the Plumbers. This seems to be the message again this year as the Festival markets two lesser known plays in a year where the festival has had to significantly cut its production budget. The message is summed up in an article posted on the GRSF website and printed inside the program that declares “You don’t need to know much in advance” to appreciate our productions. A version of this same article was e-mailed to patrons last week. As this article points out, Shakespeare generally provides much of the back story in the opening two scenes, and this back story is all an audience member needs to know.

Much Shakespeare is filled with jokes and references that most of us are not likely to catch—because they are dated, not because we’re not smart! (For example, the expression “hiking the Appalachian Trail” might be culturally witty this month, an interesting reference in a couple of years, but totally meaningless 10 years from now—let alone 400 years.) Scholars can often get to the bottom of dated references in Shakespeare, but the rest of us can simply enjoy what we do find humorous or poignant and not worry about what we might be missing.

Over the past 5 years, the Great River Shakespeare festival has demonstrated its ability and commitment to both remain faithful to the text and to make the plays alive and vibrant for a modern audience. Perhaps in the Festival’s first year I was cautious about urging everyone I knew to attend the play. I was pretty sure that I would enjoy the plays, but I was afraid others might find the plays too hard to follow, too stuffy, too wordy, or too long. But every GRSF production that I’ve seen has convinced me that Shakespeare is meant to be enjoyed by everyone.

The Tempest and Love’s Labour’s Lost play in repertory through July 26
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

by William Shakespeare, directed by Rick Barbour
Great River Shakespeare Festival Apprentice and Intern Company
(July 23, 2008)

Once again the Apprentice Company has provided Winona with another top-notch production in the back waters of the summer Shakespeare Festival. After nearly two months of providing support for the festival's main plays, the group of largely college-aged actors, technicians, and administrative interns took center stage with one of Shakespeare's lesser known romances.

Presented in three-quarter round in Winona State's black box theater, with minimal costuming, sets and props, the company presented the episodic tale of a young noble's search for adventure and romance. During the journey, Pericles gains, and devastatingly loses, title, wife, and daughter. The play is similar to A Winter's Tale (which GRSF performed in its first season) with its final joyous reunion that is clouded by melancholy questions over the years of suffering and the uncertain future.

The play utilizes a narrator—a poet named Gower—to help tie together the acts which move through several kingdoms through a span of more than 15 years. Ricardo Valencia does a marvelous job as Gower, bringing to life lengthy speeches that could easily have dragged down the action of the play. Instead, the interludes felt like natural and necessary elements in the play.

The acting in the production is uniformly strong. Because of the multiple scenes and abundance of characters that populate these scenes, nearly all of the actors play multiple parts, yet no scene or character shows any sign of a let down. It seems as if each scene was treated by the company as if it were pivotal to the entire play. This attention to detail is remarkable considering the short time the company had to bring the production together and the size and complexity of the play itself.

And just to tie the play in to the main stage productions, Pericles, in his late play euphoria, gives his daughter in marriage to a man he doesn't know. Here it seems Pericles has not heeded the example of the Kings whose daughters he himself had wooed as a younger man, confronting the audience with a stark reminder that women, even women revered for virtue, have a limited voice in who or what they will become. But that is an ongoing discussion the twenty-first century is having with Shakespeare, and I'm sure GRSF will visit it again.

Pericles plays Thursday at 7:00 and Friday at 3:00 in the Winona State University's Performing Arts Center Black Box Theater.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

The Taming of the Shrew

by William Shakespeare, directed by Alec Wild
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 9, 2008)

Alec Wild has returned to the Great River Shakespeare Festival with a splash of welcome creativity to offer one of the finest productions yet from the 5-year-old company. Wild and the production company present Italy’s Padua as a sort of circus of mimes, clowns, and minstrels who keep watch over a collection of brightly colored visitors to the city. The entire cast—including the principles—remains onstage for most of the play, populating the steel-truss towers that serve as trapeze supports, prop storage, and repositories for the varied tools of sound effects. Much of the action is exaggerated, utilizing Three Stooges-type physical comedy with feigned violence and pratfalls punctuated by bells, drums, and whistles. Characters supplement the stage action with facial expressions and poses designed to include the audience in the conspiracy. From the very beginning, the audience understands that this will be a production that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Taming of the Shrew abandons the GRSF tradition of starting its plays with the entire cast onstage for a choreographed prologue and instead sends out the lone Biondello (played by Zachary Michael Fine) who, relishing his time in the spotlight, makes several false starts before launching the anticipated prologue.

Carla Noack in The Taming of the Shrew Directed by Alec Wild (Photo: Jared Brown)

The GRSF staging of Taming certainly emphasizes the comedic aspects of the play, and certainly, Shakespeare is witty, cleaver, and playful in this work. But as the recent commemoration of comedian George Carlin should remind us, there is often humor in pushing concepts that make us uncomfortable. And Shakespeare’s play about the roles of men and women in courtship and marriage in the early 1600s likely pushed the envelope. The play poses several tenets of accepted social order: a quiet, obedient women is far preferred to one who uses her tongue and thinks for herself. Marriage arrangements are basically financial exchanges between men. Men have a right and a responsibility to make sure their wives and daughters conform to accepted social norms. Had these norms been universally accepted in 1600, Shakespeare, like Carlin, would have had little use for them as comedic devices.

Earlier I wrote about some of the problems for a modern audience with the concept of a husband “taming” his wife (see Problem Plays: Taming of the Shrew). The physical comedy takes some of the edge off this taming, but so does the stature of the characters playing the roles of tamer and shrew. Carla Noack as Katherine is taller than Christopher Gerson’s Petruchio and would not be a pushover in a physical match. So when Katherine allows Petruchio to dictate her behavior, she does not simply do it out of fear. While she has come to realize that she may not eat or see her family without giving in to Gerson’s Petruchio, she has also come to respect and possibly love Petruchio. Helping further take the edge off the taming, Gerson’s taming is pulled off in part by dumb luck. Despite his confident words, Gerson lets the audience know that his strategy is a bluff, and he certainly seems as surprised as the others when Katherine so quickly chooses to be tamed. And choice seems to be the key here: if the audience believes that Katherine is making a choice to put her lot in with Petruchio—Noack certainly plays Katherine this way—then the transformation seems a little less like brain washing and coercion. But even with fine performances by Noack and Gerson, that is still a bit of a stretch.

The Taming of the Shrew plays in repertory with The Merchant of Venice through July 26.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

The Merchant of Venice

by William Shakespeare, directed by Paul Barnes
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 3, 2008)

“Unsettling” was the word that both cast and audience kept using in the post production conversation to describe The Merchant of Venice after Thursday’s performance at the Great River Shakespeare Festival. The plot line that follows the Jewish moneylender Shylock took up most of the conversation. Jonathan Gillard Daly’s portrayal of Shylock is polarizing in the story and mesmerizing to the audience. Daly takes Shakespeare’s caricature of a Jew—godless, money-grubbing miser—and dominates the scenes that he is in. The performance is reminiscent of Daly’s powerful Richard III, but rather than being driven by Richard’s lust for power, Shylock seeks only a single revenge to help ease the pain of a lifetime of slander and injustice.

The evidence of this anti-Semitic slander is abundant, leaving it hard to find a hero amongst the characters the audience is meant to root for. We want Antonio (the merchant of the title, played by Michael Fitzpatrick) to clear his debts, yet his refusal to see Shylock as human and his harsh “mercy” at the end of the play taint our enthusiasm for him and his friends. We are certainly relieved at the turn of events that save Antonio, but we aren’t exactly cheering along with the actors on stage.

A Jew would have been rare in Shakespeare’s London, perhaps as exotic as a Prince from Morocco. So one would guess that Shakespeare’s audience would not have had much reason to question the evil caricature of Shylock, and it likely did cheer his final humiliation. But the play also offers evidence that Shakespeare didn’t believe the black and white, Christian and Jew dichotomy he created. In a well known speech, Shylock proclaims his humanity: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (III.i.64-66). And in several places in the play, Shakespeare uses Shylock to highlight the questionable actions and values of Christians. But even with these devices at work, the anti-Semitism is dominant. Director Paul Barnes’ decision to leave the text unaltered, to not soften the racism to suit the times, certainly demonstrates his respect of the intelligence of GRSF’s audience. But ironically, leaving the text alone means that we are seeing a significantly different play than Shakespeare’s original audience.

Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock in the GRSF production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo: GRSF)

Another example of this not-so-subtle racism comes in another plot line, where suitors to the rich and beautiful Portia must pass a lottery to win her hand. Before Bassanio (Antonio’s good friend, played by Zachary Michael Fine) arrives to try his luck, two other suitors—The Prince of Morocco (Donte Fitzgerald) and the Prince of Aragon (Bob Fairbrook)—try theirs. These two scenes provide comic relief as both suitors, decked out in culturally exaggerated costumes, speech, movements, and actions, fall prey to their own vanity. But Portia’s comment upon the departure of the saddened Prince of Morocco changes the audience’s perspective of a brilliantly written comedy sketch.

A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go.
Let all of his complexion choose me so. (II.vii.78-79)

This comment forces a contemporary audience to wonder if its own relief and amusement over Morocco’s failed choice was, after all, based on race. Again Barnes doesn’t let us off the hook; we have to wrestle with the uncertainty inherent in the text.

Unsettling can also be used to describe the final plot development which is clearly intended as humorous. Portia (played by Tarah Flanagan) and her maid (Carla Noack), disguised as men, have induced their new husbands to offer their respective wedding rings as tokens of appreciation for having saved Antonio. When the men return, the women chide the men for so easily parting with their rings. While the trick is clearly funny, it is also clearly manipulative. Portia uses the opportunity to place separation between her new husband Bassanio and his best friend Antonio, and in a sense, to change the ground rules for their marriage. Portia initially sets the ground rules for their marriage in a more traditional manor just after Bassanio has passed the lottery:

Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours
Is now converted. But now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o’er myself, and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours—my lord’s!—I give them with this ring,
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love,
And be my vantage to exclaim on you. (III.ii.166-174)

Even before the fiasco with the ring, Portia has shown little willingness to submit or even share power with her new husband. While freely giving over her purse to Bassanio, she continues to direct her servants and orchestrates the events that will resolve the play. But it would be hard to find fault with Portia if she is not yet willing to give over her house to Bassanio—Bassanio has done little to prove that he deserves it. He has spent his youth flitting from one adventure to another, exhausting his own fortune and borrowing heavily from his friends. In the play, he is finally choosing to get serious and take responsibility for his debts. His responsible plan: borrow more money and play a lottery to win a wealthy heiress.

The production itself seems top notch. The lighting and staging are both simple and elegant, helping the audience move from the streets of Venice to the court of Belmont to the Venetian courtroom. The three young attendants to Portia (Orion McCullough-Smith, Christopher Bernard, and Mitchell Essar) sing a lovely passage put to music by Daniel Kallman. The acting certainly meets the high quality that we’ve come to expect from the festival. Along with Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock, Tarah Flanagan’s Portia controls both the court and her home of Belmont, and Chris Mixon plays a memorable Gratiano, the type of friend you’d rather didn’t come along when meeting your future spouse. Doug Scholz-Carlson seems to have taken over the role of company fool, and here he does a particularly nice job fooling with words as Lancelot Gobbo.

The Great River Shakespeare Festival’s The Merchant of Venice is certainly more thought provoking than satisfying. While a comedy—it abounds in weddings—the humor is often overshadowed by the many unsettling aspects of the play itself. And rather than simply transport an audience to a romantic Venice, the play forces us to explore our own experiences with racism. There may not be another way to honestly play The Merchant of Venice.

The Merchant of Venice plays in reperatory with The Taming of the Shrew through July 27.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Problem Plays: The Taming of the Shrew

The Great River Shakespeare Festivals 2008 offerings include two plays that are often described as “problem” plays. These type of problem plays use stereotypes or social attitudes that might seem offensive to contemporary audiences. Both of the GRSF plays this summer, The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice, have seen periods where theater companies refused to stage them. Luckily, both plays receive regular productions as theaters and audiences welcome the opportunity to enjoy these important works, often by finding ways to confront or diffuse the racism or sexism that contribute significantly to their plot development. I am excited that GRSF has brought these two plays to Southeast Minnesota this summer, and I look forward to seeing them both.

The Plot

The Taming of the Shrew is a Shakespearean comedy, which means an audience can expect a plot driven by coincidence and chance, characters in disguise, clownish characters, and a happy ending replete with multiple marriages. Shrew does not disappoint.

Baptista, a rich gentleman, has two daughters of marriageable age. The younger daughter, Bianca, has attracted several competing suitors, while Katherine has none. Baptista decides that he will not entertain any suits for his younger daughter until a match is found for his older daughter who has a reputation as a “shrew.” This declaration sends the suitors on a search for someone crazy or desperate enough to marry Katherine—a task they view as impossible, even with the generous dowry and their own bounty added to the mix.

Enter the clownish gentleman from Vienna, Petruchio, who not only willingly takes on Katherine, her sizable dowry, her future inheritance, and the payments from Bianca's suitors, but undertakes the seemingly impossible task of “taming” her.

The Problems with the Text

Carla Noack as Kate and Christopher Gerson as Petruchio in the Great River Shakespeare Festival’ The Taming of the Shrew. (Photo: GRSF)

While the play is very funny and very clever, the humor can be dampened by the sexist portrayal of marriage and women in the text. It should make us squirm a bit—and I suppose it might have made some early 17th Century Londoners squirm too. Some scholars point out that the abundance of surviving treatises and sermons dictating the proper role of women in marriage and society suggests that many women were not exactly embracing the role of obedience and servility in the early 1600s.

• Katherine is called shrew and devil and freely described as curst and rough. But like derogatory terms used for women today—terms such as bitch, slut, whore, and feminazi—the terms are difficult to define, and they are nearly impossible to refute because of their ambiguous meaning, illogical application, and malicious intent. The function of these words is to bully women into silence and conformity.
• Another troubling aspect of the play is that the daughters are not allowed any voice in who they will marry. Even though Bianca has many suitors, her father chooses without consulting Bianca. And in this case, Baptista chooses the highest bidder. One of the suitors, Lucentio, utilizes a two-prong strategy to try and win Bianca. He devises a way to secretly spend time with Bianca while his servant negotiates the financial deal with the father. But the disguised meetings with Bianca are simply for sport; only the financial deal holds any weight in marriage considerations. Another suitor, Hortensio, also disguises himself to meet directly with Bianca. But he fails to enter into negotiations with the father and, therefore, has no chance.
  
  Katherine's marriage is also arranged between suitor and father. But here it is the father (and Bianca's suitors) who makes the payments. Both daughters are traded as property by father and suitors. Petruchio even puts it in words on his wedding day:
  She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
  My household stuff, my field my barn,
  My horse my ox my ass my anything. (III.ii.220-222)
  
• A final problem is with the main comic device of the play—the “taming” of Katherine. Petruchio marries Katherine with the assurance that he can turn her from curst devil into a model wife, mild and obedient. His methods are those of a falconer taming a wild bird—and Shakespeare uses rich metaphors from falconry throughout:
  My Falcon now is sharp and passing empty
  And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged,
  For then she never looks upon her lure. (IV.ii.159-161)
  
  
  He captures her, removes her from her native place, refuses her food and sleep, then makes sure she knows that she can only get food and clothing through him. And before allowing her to return to her native home, she must accept his word as truth—even going so far as to embrace an old man as a young girl and calling the sun the moon. While the falconry metaphor is brilliantly written, this brainwashing is chilling when applied to a human being.

Playing to a Contemporary Audience

Katherine finally is allowed to speak for herself at the end of the play, and her words lay out the ideal for a loving, obedient wife—a final speech that leaves the play's characters astonished in admiration at her transformation and leaves the reader/audience cringing. It seems to me that this scene can only work for a contemporary audience if a couple of things happen. One, the audience buys into the “shrew” conceit and accepts that Katherine is better off in her new reincarnation. A more likely strategy is to play Katherine so large that she is seen as an equal to Petruchio, despite the limited text Shakespeare gives her to define herself. If the company can achieve this portrayal, the final speech can be viewed as a truce or understanding between equals who hold each other with mutual respect and love.

The text of the play seems starkly oppressive (and I'm contemplating the play entirely from the text here), but the play in production can be very different. Actors, directors, and designers are able to make choices that allow the audience to enjoy Shakespeare's keen wit while allowing Katherine to have a voice. The choice of Carla Noack as Katherine in the Great River Shakespeare Festival's production is a good indication that Katherine's voice will be heard. I expect that most theater companies who undertake this play will find ways to make the play work for an audience without asking them to accept a view of women as property to be exchanged between men.

The Taming of the Shrew plays in reperatory with The Merchant of Venice through July 27.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Summer Theatre Season in Full Swing

Summer theatre in southeast Minnesota is in full swing with four professional companies staging eight different productions. This weekend marks the opening of the fifth season of the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona with a free after-play concert by Chicago rhythm and blues artist James Armstrong at Levee park (Saturday, July 28). The Jon Hassler Theater's summer offering, The Good Doctor, started in mid June, and The Commonweal's production of Harvey started the summer season in late May. The Gilmore Creek Summer Theater begins the second week of July with the creepy musical The Little Shop of Horrors. In its second season, Gilmore Creek has added a children's selection to their two-play summer series.

Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (photo: GRSF)

Here is a brief listing of summer offerings. Please check with the individual theaters for dates, times, and ticket information.

Jon Hassler Theater, Plainview, Minnesota

The Good Doctor by Neil Simon
Thursdays - Sundays, through July 13
Schedules and tickets: Jon Hassler Theater

Commonweal Theatre, Lanesboro, Minnesota

Harvey by Mary Chase
Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman
Thursdays - Mondays, through October 25
Schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

Great River Shakespeare Festival, Winona Minnesota

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Tuesdays - Sundays, through July 27
Schedules and tickets: Great River Shakespeare Festival

Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre, St. Mary's Page Theater, Winona, Minnesota

Little Shop of Horrors by Ashman & Mencken (opens July 10)
The Foreigner by Larry Shue (opens July 17)
Thursdays - Sundays, through August 3
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Gilmore Creek Children's Theatre

Mouse Expedition by Erin Malcolm and Brian Blankenship
Five performances July 19 - August 2
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Julius Caesar

By William Shakespeare, Directed by Rick Barbour
Great River Shakespeare Festival Apprentice Acting and Intern Company
July 24, 2007

The now traditional introduction of the cast of characters that begins all Great River Shakespeare Festival productions seemed as if it would never conclude on Tuesday night as the Apprentice Acting and Intern Company presented Julius Caesar for the first of two performances. The cast of Senators, conspirators, soldiers, and citizens—with many actors taking on two, and three roles told the the story of the plotting and successful murder of Julius Caesar and the ensuing fight for control of Rome that takes place after his grizzly death. The story is full of clasping of hands and heart-felt declarations of love and loyalty to each other and to Rome. It also contains delicious deceit and political betrayal.

Philip Zimmermann as Julius Caesar and Caesar’s ghost, and even Caesar’s statue, carries the name of the play well, though his character is involved little with the development of the plot—he is the unwitting object of it. Led by the tenacious Anna Sundberg as Caius Cassius, a group of Senators plots against Caesar to prevent him from becoming “too strong.” Like all politicians, they assure themselves that their motives are not for personal gain, but for love of country. And to this end, and for political cover, they mus convince the honorable Brutus to join the conspiracy. David Utter plays the honest friend of Caesar and the recipient of Caesar’s famous words, “Et tu, Brute?”

Julius Caesar has an amazing amount of words, words that have entered the day to day lexicon of modern America and words put together in speeches lengthy, bold, and pretentious. These Apprentices and Interns had to learn all of these words while understudying the main festival productions, putting up posters, setting up tents, selling coffee and cookies, directing traffic, lifting barges, and toting bales. Anyone involved with the festival will tell you that these young actors, stage hands, and technicians have been working hard this summer.

Julius Caesar depicts a politics familiar to anyone following American politics—though the falling on swords and spilling of blood are generally metaphoric in today’s picture. Mark Anthony’s funeral speech for Caesar—“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!”—signals a turn in the play by using a brilliant rhetorical device that has often been imitated. Stepping up after Brutus has convinced the citizens of Rome that Caesar’s death was necessary to protect Rome, Chris Lysy as Mark Anthony turns their affection back against Brutus with his humble repetition of Brutus’s honor:

He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says he was ambitions,
And Brutus is an honorable man. (III.ii.84-86)

Along with the blood, nearly every character is smeared with politics in the hand clasps, oaths, and love of country. My anthology calls this The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. But it’s more truly Brutus’s tragedy, and even more truly, it’s the tragedy of those who mistake political ends for moral ends. It might be a preview of the upcoming presidential elections.

This is a production that you’ll want to skip work on Friday afternoon to see. It’s great acting, great production, and great theater. Congratulations to the Apprentices and Interns for a job well done.

Julius Caesar plays Friday at 3:00 p.m.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules: Great River Shakespeare Festival