Much Ado About Tragedy

I recently acquired the DVD to Kenneth Branagh's film version of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I was rather taken aback by a quote from Roger Ebert on the case: "CHEERFUL FROM BEGINNING TO END."

Really? Cheerful? The false accusations of infidelity? The father wishing his only child was dead? The nearly averted duel between two friends? Cheerful?

One of the things that interests me about the play is how it constantly borrows the characters, plot devices, and even language of tragedy and turns them into comedy. Don John, for instance, seems a forerunner of Iago and Edmund in his motiveless villainy. The friar's idea of pretending a young woman is dead comes right out of Romeo and Juliet. Over and over again, the devices of tragedy are used for comedy.

This is seen in the Prince's line (much played upon in the piece) where he says: "In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke." The phrase became proverbial, but originally it came from a poem by Thomas Watson. The first few lines (themselves including a rough translation from a sonnet by Seraphine) run like this:

                              In time the Bull is brought to wear the yoke;

                              In time all haggard Hawks will stoop the Lures;

                              In time small wedge will cleave the sturdiest Oak;

                              In time the Marble wears with weakest showers:
   
                              More fierce is my sweet love, more hard withal,
   
                              Than Beast, or Bird, than Tree or Stony wall.

Shakespeare likely didn't get the line from Watson, though. He didn't need to. It was already much more famous from Thomas Kyd's use of it in The Spanish Tragedy. The villain Lorenzo says at the beginning of Act II:

                              My lord, though Bel-imperia seem thus coy, 
                              Let reason hold you in your wonted joy: 
                              In time the savage bull sustains the yoke, 
                              In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure, 
                              In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak,
                              In time the flint is pierced with softest shower; 
                              And she in time will fall from her disdain,
                              And rue the sufferance of your friendly pain.

Basically, he's telling Balthazar, son of the Viceroy of Portugal, that if the lady Bel-imperia is not moved by friendly courtship, they can force her to do their will. For Shakespeare's audience, the Prince's lines might have carried some dark overtones, and they almost certainly would have reminded people of Kyd's bloody play.

The villains in The Spanish Tragedy ultimately make good on their threats and kill Bel-imperia's lover, Horatio. The murder scene, memorialized on the frontispiece for the published edition of the play, ends like this:

                              BEL-IMPERIA: O, save his life, and let me die for him! 
                              O, save him, brother! save him, Balthazar!
                              I loved Horatio, but he loved not me. 

                              BALTHAZAR: But Balthazar loves Bel-imperia. 

                              LORENZO: Although his life were still ambitious, proud, 
                              Yet is he at the highest now he is dead. 

                              BEL-IMPERIA: Murder! murder! help! Hieronimo, help! 

                              LORENZO: Come, stop her mouth! away with her!

Here's the image that appeared in the published script:

Notice the villain on the right is speaking the famous last line "stop her mouth!" Does that line sound familiar? It should. 

At the end of Much Ado About Nothing, a character says of Beatrice: "Peace! I will stop your mouth." Now the character attributions in the play are notoriously problematic. (At one point, Dogberry is referred to as Kemp, the name of the actor who played him.) Here, the original text lists Leonato as the speaker, but most editors agree that the line belongs to Benedick, and the traditional stage direction there is that he kisses her.

So what is Shakespeare doing? He's taking a line famous for its use in tragedy and reworking it into a confirmation of romantic happiness that resolves a comedy. Gutsy, innovative, but hardly cheerful from beginning to end.

Saint Crispin's Day

Today is the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, the patrons of cobblers, so in honor of today, we should all be wearing shoes.

Well, and theatre nerds like me are probably remembering the Saint Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V.

If you've never seen the Kenneth Branagh film version of Henry V, go watch it now. No, seriously, stop reading this blog post and watch it RIGHT NOW.

Done? Wasn't that awesome! As my friend Victoria put it, if only we could live life at the pitch of that film... well, okay, it would probably kill us, but still! It would be worth it.

In honor of the day, I thought I would blog the speech with a few random comments. Here's what the king has to say:

                                                            What's he that wishes so?
                              My cousin, Westmorland?

The Earl of Westmorland (one of the king's cousins, if you care) has just wished that ten thousand men now in England were with the English army in France. If the audience remembers back to the beginning of the play, they might recall that England had to leave some troops at home to guard against an invasion by Scotland. Henry, however, will have none of this second-guessing of that earlier decision.

                                                            No, my fair cousin;
                              If we are mark'd to die, we are enough
                              To do our country loss; and if to live,
                              The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

Honor has been a major theme throughout the Henriad, the tetralogy of history plays encompassing Richard II, The First Part of Henry IV, The Second Part of Henry IV, and Henry V. Falstaff, the shameful mentor to the future King Henry V, claims in 1H4 that honor is nothing but a word. Obviously, the king disagrees.

                              God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
                              By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
                              Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
                              It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
                              Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
                              But if it be a sin to covet honor,
                              I am the most offending soul alive.

Clothing imagery runs strong throughout Shakespeare. Think of Petruchio's line in The Taming of the Shrew: "To me she's married, not unto my clothes." Fine clothes, gold, rich food, these are all nothing. Honor is all that matters.

                              No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
                              God's peace! I would not lose so great an honor
                              As one man more, methinks, would share from me,
                              For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!

Of course, wishing more men won't bring them there, but the king has something else in mind. He wants to make sure that those who do fight with him give all that they have.

                              Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,
                              That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
                              Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
                              And crowns for convoy put into his purse;

Interestingly enough, this is pretty much what Judas Maccabaeus does in the Bible. According to the First Book of Maccabees (considered apocryphal by Protestants): "Those who were building houses or were about to be married, or were planting a vineyard, or were faint-hearted, he told them to go home again, according with the law" (1 MAC 3:56). In the play, the king gives this reason for his action:

                              We would not die in that man's company
                              That fears his fellowship to die with us.

And then we get to the day for which the speech is named.

                              This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
                              He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
                              Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
                              And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

By some accounts, Crispin and Crispian were born in Britain and lived in Canterbury. In any case, they ended up martyred for preaching the Gospel in Gaul, which is present-day France. Now, the king must prepare his men for the possibility that they, too, will die as martyrs for a cause in France. Staying positive, however, he focuses on those who will survive.

                              He that shall live this day, and see old age,
                              Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
                              And say "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."
                              Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
                              And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."

That last line doesn't appear in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, but it does appear in a Quarto version published in 1600. It serves as a reminder that many of Shakespeare's plays have multiple texts from which editors can choose.

                              Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
                              But he'll remember, with advantages,
                              What feats he did that day. 

Remembering "with advantages" implies that the survivors will add to the truth, telling tall tales. So what? To the king, that doesn't seem to matter.

                                                            Then shall our names,
                              Familiar in his mouth as household words—

Charles Dickens borrowed from that line in naming a journal he edited Household Words.

                              Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
                              Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
                              Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

We get to see these characters onstage, adding to our enjoyment of the monologue.

                              This story shall the good man teach his son;
                              And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
                              From this day to the ending of the world,
                              But we in it shall be remembered—

And indeed, we do remember them, in plays, in films, and even in blog posts.

                              We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
                              For he today that sheds his blood with me
                              Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
                              This day shall gentle his condition;

As young Prince Hal, the future king hung out with lowlifes in a tavern in Eastcheap. That time seemed wasted to many, but now he is able to relate to the common man. He truly does see them as his brothers.

                              And gentlemen in England now a-bed
                              Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
                              And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
                              That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Bravo, King Henry! Where do we sign up?

The Thane on the Big Screen

Today I saw Justin Kurzel's film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The movie is unrelenting, bleak, bloody, and beautifully shot.

Shakespeare never wrote a tragedy without laugh-out-loud jokes, just as he never wrote a comedy that didn't have a serious side. Kurzel's film strives for unrelieved gloom, though, so it cuts not only the hysterical porter scene, but also every laugh line in the play.

Of course, it's not just the laughs the play eliminates. Very little of the original text remains. Instead of communicating the story through poetry, Kurzel uses ponderous shots that dwell upon battlefields, castles, and the two enormously good-looking leads, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.

As the film begins, we see a dead child of the Macbeths, and then soon after a young man (presumably Mac Junior) dies in battle. The couple's painful lack of heirs becomes even more painful, and it doesn't help that the three witches frequently carry babies and are accompanied by a suitably creepy little girl.

These witches are the highlight of the film. The scars on the faces are never explained, and don't need to be. Their dead-pan delivery of many of their lines works, and Lady Macbeth's scenes in churches (in one scene staring at a depiction of the Last Judgement, with poor souls being carried off to Hell) make the audience wonder how different Christianity is from the warped morality of the Weird Sisters.

Personally, it was Shakespeare's poetry that made me fall in love with his plays, so I found the mud-filled images a poor trade-off for the missing text. Keep in mind, however, that I've seen some pretty amazing productions of Macbeth recently, including a surprisingly good version by The Public Theater's Mobile Shakespeare Unit earlier this year and last summer's even better version at the Park Avenue Armory featuring Kenneth Branagh.

Films frequently have other aims, however, and this version does benefit from one of the better Lady Macbeths I've seen in a while. Cotillard appeared last year in James Gray's film The Immigrant, and once again she gives all she has to a project, even if the follow-through on the concept isn't entirely successful.

Wolf Hall

Marathon theatre can always be fun. The Royal Shakespeare Company taught Broadway how to do it when the RSC brought David Edgar's eight-and-a-half-hour adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby to the United States. I still wish I had gotten to see the second half of Robert Schenkkan's The Kentucky Cycle in 1993, but I was in college and only had the time and money to see the first half. Fortunately, I did see all of Rose Rage, which reduced Shakespeare's Henry VI plays into a mere four hours.

Yesterday, I got the chance to see Wolf Hall, both Parts One and Two, the latest marathon theatre event to hit New York. As with Nicholas Nickleby, this production comes from the RSC, but instead of adapting a behemoth novel by Charles Dickens, it adapts two Man Booker Prize-winning novels by Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

Though you can see Parts One and Two on different days, I recommend seeing them all at a go, getting Part One in with a matinee, and then seeing Part Two in the evening. Depending on whether you see it on Saturday or Sunday, this will give you two-and-a-half to three hours between shows to get dinner and relax before jumping into the next half.

In Part One, we watch the low-born lawyer Thomas Cromwell (played by Ben Miles) maneuver a way to help King Henry VIII (Nathaniel Parker) annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon (Lucy Briers), all so he can marry the vivacious and power-hungry Anne Boleyn (Lydia Leonard). At the end of this first part, Henry has finally married Anne, but is already tiring of her. In a brief moment, he glimpses the beautiful Jane Seymour (Leah Brotherhead) at her family's estate, Wolf Hall. Their eyes lock, and we see that poor Cromwell will have to go through the whole mess all over again.

While the ending of Part One is effective, it leaves you ready to see what happens next, and I was glad to be able to return for Part Two after only a brief break. (Long enough to walk to the New York Public Library, stick my head into the World War I exhibit, walk back, and have a leisurely meal at Lillie's, just a couple blocks from the theatre.) As Machiavellian as Cromwell is in Part One, he is even more ruthless in Part Two. That part ends with a bit more closure, though it still makes you wish Mantel would hurry up and publish the third book in the trilogy. (That book, The Mirror and the Light, is scheduled to come out sometime this year.)

What makes Mantel's telling of the story so interesting is her unorthodox characterizations of the characters. Anne Boleyn, besieged heroine of Maxwell Anderson's Anne of a Thousand Days, becomes a shrewish, scheming, vengeful tyrant, who probably did do all those awful things she was charged with in her trial. Thomas More, the saintly hero of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, becomes a prideful religious zealot dedicated to burning every last heretic in England. And Cromwell, murderous, bloody, torture-loving Cromwell, become the hero!

Not that he's particularly heroic as he pulls down one person after another into an early grave, but the play forces us to sympathize with him. He has a loving and honest relationship with his wife Lizzie, though she completely disagrees with the king sidelining Queen Katherine. He also clearly loves his daughters, whom he educates just as much as his sons. When a deadly fever causes Cromwell to lose so many whom he loves, the audience can't help but to feel for him.

Also surprising is the portrayal of Cardinal Wolsey, the corrupt Archbishop of York who never even visited his own diocese, instead preferring to cavort with his mistresses and scheme how to get his way at the Vatican. Though Shakespeare makes Wolsey into a tragic figure in Henry VIII, he never lets us forget that the man is an overreacher. Wolf Hall, by contrast, makes Wolsey out to be a pleasant man, friendly and generous, who just wants a comfortable life and a nice college as Oxford as his legacy. In the end, he gets neither.

In a central scene, Anne has a masque staged in which devils drag a man dressed as Wolsey off into a Hellmouth. All of the courtiers cheer, with the exception of the poet Thomas Wyatt, who cries out that the whole performance is shameful. Cromwell, who formerly served the cardinal, does not forget Wyatt's act of decency, nor does he forgive those who laughed and jeered at his late employer.

Mike Poulton, who previously adapted Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for the RSC, wrote the stage adaptation of Mantel's novels. Jeremy Herrin directed.

The most striking production element was the sparse but effect set designed by Christopher Oram, who also designed the magnificent set for Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth at the Park Avenue Armory last year. Giant grey squares form a cross at the back of the stage, which can be lit in various ways. Above the stage, an evocative but mysterious metal grid hangs over everything. Occasionally, fire burst up from the floor. The set beautifully compliments the muted period costumes, also designed by Oram.

Wolf Hall is playing until July 5. There are a limited number of $39 rush tickets, plus discounts available for students. For more information, check out the show's website here:

WOLF HALL

A Stage Within a Stage

Meta-theatricality is wonderful on stage... when it works.

In Leonid Andreyev's short play Requiem, for instance, the set is described as "The replica of a small theatre." On one side is a stage, and on the other are puppets set up like an audience. The acton takes place on the stage within a stage, and at the end of the play the character of "Theatre Manager" has a long monologue, seen only by the puppets in the audience, and of course by the real audience watching the whole thing.

Requiem is a symbolist drama from 1916, very earnest and very dark. Yet a similar set-up is used by a play of a very different sort: Broadway's A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. Set designer Alexander Dodge placed upon the stage at the Walter Kerr Theatre another stage, an elaborate Victorian proscenium stage in fact, complete with footlights and a lush, velvet curtain. Since all musicals are highly theatrical, and since the play's imaginative Edwardian setting has its own sense of heightened realism, the meta-theatricality works wonderfully.

Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak's A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is based on Roy Horniman's 1907 novel Israel Rank, about a young man who murders a number of people in line to inherit a title, finally inheriting it himself. That novel was also the subject of a film with Alec Guinness called Kind Hearts and Coronets. The play was in development for years, and eventually made it to Broadway, no thanks to the holding company that owns the rights to the 1949 film. In spite of the fact the story is in the public domain, the company filed a baseless copyright suit against the show's creators. Thankfully, a judge threw out the frivolous suit, paving the way for countless audiences to enjoy the show.

Though I've been wanting to see the play for a while, it was only this afternoon that I finally got to watch it. I was certainly not disappointed. Freedman and Lutvak's songs are delightful, especially the opening number, "A Warning to the Audience," as well as "I Don't Know What I'd Do," a song sung by one of the protagonist's two love interests. That role, Sibella, was taken by Scarlett Strallen, an actor who impressed me greatly last year as Lady MacDuff in Kenneth Branagh's production of Macbeth.

What really struck me about this production, however, was Dodge's beautiful set. By lowering and raising the curtain on the stage within a stage, the crew can seamlessly perform set changes while the play continues in front of the false proscenium. Plus, while tables and chairs to the sides of the stage are basically realistic, the set pieces on the stage within a stage can look like painted flats. The more stylized set pieces fit right in, and they add immensely to the humor of the play.

Upon occasion the proscenium itself is used, as arms and faces pop out of openings, or the protagonist is forced to climb up its side. Even the show's finale manages to make use of the proscenium arch.

Broadway might be worlds away from Andreyev's symbolist drama, but it certainly has learned a thing or two about how to make meta-theatricality work.

Best Plays of 2014

It's that time of year again, and I'm compiling a list of the best new shows I saw in New York in 2014.

Last year the big hits included Saint Joan, Unlock'd, Tamar of the River, and Dialogues des Carmelites.

This year, the same rules apply. This list is only shows that opened in New York City in 2014. (Sorry, Matilda!) However, given my recent post on the top 12 plays of the late 18th century, I'm increasing my picks to a round dozen. Here they are in reverse order:

12. El Año en que nací  This documentary theater piece played at La Mama in January as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Performed in Spanish, with English supertitles, it featured young people imagining what life had been like in Chile for their parents around the years when they had been born. Playwright and director Lola Arias beautifully wove together narratives by each of the cast members, creating a haunting portrait of Chile under Pinochet.

11. Billy & Ray  This production at the Vineyard Theatre could hardly have been more different from the avant-garde style of Lola Arias, yet it also attempted to recreate true events. In this case, the action surrounded the writing of the screenplay for Double Indemnity, one of the most influential noir films of all time. Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, both brilliant writers in very different ways, collaborated to pen the screenplay, and the experience knocked poor Chandler off the wagon. Comic playwright Mike Bencivenga turned that story into a delightful, frequently farcical play that provided a platform for actors Vincent Kartheiser (Wilder) and Larry Pine (Chandler) to show their stuff. The result was an evening of pure magic.

10. Tamburlaine the Great  Christopher Marlowe might have been basing his megalomaniacal hero-villain on a real person, but facts in this play scarcely matter, and Theatre for a New Audience's production directed by Michael Boyd deftly set the production in a timeless era with geographical differences only hinted at from time to time. War, bloodshed, and pointless slaughter remain constant, no matter where or when they might occur. It's still playing until January 4, so get your tickets here.

9. pool (no water)  Mark Ravenhill's play received an excellent production at the Barrow Street Theatre in November, thanks to the One Year Lease Theater Company. Director Ianthe Demos broke up the famous in-your-face playwright's block text into five voices, performed by a superb cast of actors. The ingenious set consisted of only a handful of long, white benches, which the cast rearranged in astonishing ways. The story, which follows a group of artists invited out to visit the California home of one of their former associates, might not seem terribly moving (in part because the characters themselves are such terrible people), but innovative staging and exceptional acting made this piece a pleasure to watch, even as increasingly horrible things began to happen.

8. Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill  This play by Lanie Robertson is sensational even without a star like Audra McDonald. However, with McDonald giving the performance of a lifetime, how could you not love it? James Noone provided a set design that transformed the Circle in the Square into a jazz club for legends fallen upon hard times. Instead of just a single piano player accompanying Billie Holiday, the audience was treated to a three-piece band that created a haunting and memorable sound. If you missed it, fortunately there's a cast album available.

7. Tristan & Yseult  Esteemed British company Kneehigh brought this fresh take on an old legend to St. Ann's Warehouse. Though the production contained less dance than I anticipated, I was not disappointed. Writers Anna Maria Murphy and Carl Grose kept a contemporary feel for the piece, with occasional nods to the medieval source material and the famous opera by Wagner. Most moving for me me was the portrayal of Whitehands, played by Kristy Woodward, who commented on the action with the aid of the Lovespotters, a chorus of crooners who observe love at arm's length but never engage in passion themselves. The audience, however, has no choice but to engage emotionally, whether flying with elated lovers or burning with despair in this production so skillfully directed by Emma Rice.

6. Red Velvet  Kudos to St. Ann's Warehouse for making the list twice with a second British import. Tricycle Theatre brought the 19th-century Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge to life in this wonderful new play by Lolita Chakrabarti. Adrian Lester, known for his own Shakespearean acting, played Aldridge with both easy grace and simmering anger. As a bonus for theatre history nerds, both Charles Kean and Ellen Tree made appearances in the play.

5. Machinal  In January, Roundabout officially opened this stunning revival of Sophie Treadwell's classic play. I saw it in previews and was quite moved by Rebecca Hall's magnificent performance as a doomed murderess. Treadwell's expressionist drama gives the audience nine scenes of descent into an increasingly mechanized life. This production also featured transitional scenes, as Es Devlin's set rotated to reveal new rooms, like fresh cages for urban rats. Director Lyndsey Turner skillfully helmed the play, steering us toward the inevitable conclusion, where the true horror of the machine, literal as well as metaphorical, becomes apparent. This was the kind of production that makes me regret not getting a chance to see more of Roundabout's plays.

4. That Poor Dream  The Assembly's modern-day adaptation of Great Expectations had me on two fronts, adapting a work by my favorite novelist and setting it aboard a familiar Metro North train headed from Grand Central to Connecticut. Though the piece skillfully uses much of the dialogue by Dickens, it branches out to explore how the issues in the novel apply to the United States in the 21st century. I'm writing in the present tense now because while That Poor Dream closed in October, it is reopening in January for six performances at The Tank. It's playing only from the 9th through the 11th, so get our tickets here.

3. King Lear  The Public Theater doesn't always do Shakespeare to my liking, but they nailed it this year with this magnificent outdoor production starring John Lithgow. Though excessively long (combining Shakespeare's two texts of Lear to create an extended version lasting well over three hours), this production gave a moving portrayal of a once-great man slipping into madness and struggling to regain his senses (and his dignity) again. Chuckwudi Iwuji, who also played Bajazeth in Tamburlaine, was a memorable Edgar, feigning madness with compelling vigor. His father Gloucester, played by Clarke Peters, was also quite effective. Though the set (designed by John Lee Beatty) might not have been as creative as the one for That Poor Dream, it worked incredibly well in Central Park's Delacorte, especially with lighting designed by Jeff Croiter and projections by Tal Yarden. Thankfully, director Daniel Sullivan brought it all together this time.

2. All the Way  Amazingly, I never blogged about this show, but perhaps I just wanted to keep the memory of it pure in my mind. The last time playwright Robert Schenkkan had a play on Broadway was The Kentucky Cycle in 1993. I saw that play as a freshman in college, and it left quite an impression on me. Now, more than two decades later, Schenkkan was back again with another play exploring America's history. This one focused on L.B.J.'s efforts to get the Civil Rights Act passed and then win re-election so the Republicans wouldn't smash it all to pieces. Bryan Cranston played President Johnson impeccably, virtually disappearing into his character. The rest of the cast was exceptional as well

1. Macbeth  Hands down, this was the theatrical event of the year. Kenneth Branagh starred in and co-directed this production at the Park Avenue Armory. Doctor Who's Alex Kingston played Lady Macbeth, and Jimmy Yuill (Captain Jamy from Branagh's Henry V) was Banquo. Though originally performed in a deconsecrated church, this production re-imagined itself for its new home in the Armory. It used the historic building for great effect, and when the doors opened into the massive drill hall, it was impossible not to be in awe of the Scottish heath that had been built inside the building. Open flames, clanging broadswords, and blood, blood, blood abounded. Even better, however, was watching Branagh illuminate Shakespeare's words in ways only he can do. The "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech seemed fresh and new, as if we were hearing it for the first time, even though many of us had been forced to memorize it in high school. Thank you, Mr. Branagh! And please come back to New York soon!

Honorable mentions include Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, Row After Row, and Hellman v. McCarthy. Here's to an even better theatre year in 2015!

Bearing Witness Behind Wires

This week, I saw Svandovo Theatre's production of the Holocaust drama The Good and the True, which is now playing at DR2 Theatre in New York. One of the oldest drama theatres in Prague, Svandovo usually performs plays in Czech, but with English supertitles in order to bring in a more international audience. This production, however, has been adapted into English by Brian Daniels, so you won't need to worry about reading and watching at the same time.

The Good and the True presents side by side two first-person narratives of Czech Jews who both narrowly escaped being murdered during the Holocaust. The characters, portrayed by Isobel Pravda and Saul Reichlin, never meet during the course of the play, but their stories have similar arcs. Both, while Jewish, are happily integrated into Czech society, and both are surprised when the German army takes over their country in a matter of days with scarcely any resistance. Both are sent to Auschwitz, and both escape death through a combination of happenstance and well timed initiative.

Because the two stories do not seem to intersect, it seems odd at first that these two particular narratives have been selected. However, they both view the Holocaust from a distinctly Czech perspective. For instance, when victims go to the gas chambers singing the Czechoslovakian national anthem, we see the Holocaust not just as a religious or ethnic struggle, but one of free nations struggling to assert themselves amidst the darkness of Nazi tyranny.

The first thing the audience notices when walking into the theatre is that barbed wire is stretched across the proscenium, literally cutting off the audience from the action on the stage. This might seem unduly alienating, separating audience and performers as "us" and "them" the same way Jews and other "undesirables" were separated from the rest of the world under the Third Reich. However, the lighting design (originally created by Karel Simek) makes the wires seem to vanish at times, so our focus is entirely on the actors. At other moments, the performers walk right up to the wires, and the lighting accentuates the barrier locking them into the concentration camp.

Several adaptors shaped the testimonies of actress Hana Pravda and athlete Milos Dobry into the script, and there are a few times when the play feels like there were too many cooks in the kitchen, but the narratives themselves are--as the title implies--both good and true.

Hana Pravda was a noted Czech actor who got taken under the wing by ‪Olga Scheinpflugová‬, then the wife of R.U.R. author Karel Capek. Having her played by her own granddaughter, Isobel Pravda, adds an element of personal significance to the performance, and Ms. Pravda (who also appeared in the latest Jack Ryan movie directed by Kenneth Branagh) executes the role flawlessly.

Mr. Reichlin gives an equally moving performance as Milos Dobry, a young athlete whose physical strength helped save his life when he was chosen to be moved to a labor camp rather than be sent to the gas chambers. Amidst the nightmare of the Holocaust, Dobry also met and fell in love with his future wife while the two were being held at a camp in Terezin. This love story helps not only the character, but the audience, too, to get through the hellish events narrated in the play.

If I had one criticism of the piece, it would be that all of the action on stage--the stunning set, the skilled lighting, the music that gets brought in several times--does not necessarily make the stories any more moving than if they had been recited by two actors standing still on a bare stage. It is the narratives that grab us, and the sets, costumes, lighting, and music all seem somewhat superfluous with stories this powerful.

Macbeth at the Armory

Last night I arrived at the Park Avenue Armory to see Macbeth, co-directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. You have to understand that when I was in high school, I watched Branagh's Henry V even more than I watched Star Wars, and that's saying a lot. For me, seeing Branagh live on stage, playing one of the greatest Shakespearean roles there is, wielding a broadsword to a score composed by Patrick Doyle, just like he did in Henry V, was the chance of a lifetime. And no, I was not disappointed.

When I arrived at the Armory, things were a bit chaotic. This was only the third performance of the show, and some of the ushers were giving me conflicting information, so it seems not all of the kinks had been worked out yet concerning how to get the audience inside. How difficult could that be? Well, this is not your ordinary theatrical experience.

Upon getting my ticket at the will-call booth, I was given a green-and-white wristband with my clan name on it. I was in clan Macduff, which is clearly the best clan ever. After all, nothing bad could ever happen to someone in Macduff's family, right?

As I left the box office area, a young woman dressed in vaguely medieval clothing greeted me as a member of her clan. She instructed me to have a look around the armory, but to make sure I eventually gathered with others upstairs in our clan room so we could prepare for battle. Macduff would be the first clan to process onto the field, she said.

If you go to Macbeth at the Armory, I recommend that you use the restrooms in the basement, rather than the one unisex bathroom on the second floor. (There's also a lady's room on the second floor, so this is less important for women, but guys on the second floor were waiting forever to pee. "Welcome to our world," sigh all of my female blog readers in unison.) I spent a good deal of time in line rather than getting to see the different rooms in the armory. Fortunately, I had seen them before, but if you've never been to the Armory, go early. The building is delightful to explore.

I got to the Macduff clan room just as people were starting to process. I grabbed a program, complete with my clan name and tartan, and proceeded down to the drill hall where the performance is. A hooded figure rang a bell and opened a gigantic wooden door into... a heath! Yes, they had built a Scottish heath INSIDE the armory! Figures with torches (not flashlights, real torches) led us down a long stone path, with mud and clumps of vegetation on either side of us. Before us was a structure made of monoliths resembling Stonehenge.

We filed up a long flight of stairs behind the scaffolding that supports the bleachers. Be forewarned, you don't have comfortable Broadway-style seats for this show. You will be sitting on hard wood for the next two hours. The audience is on both sides of the action, with the Stonehenge-type ruins on the one end, and a church-like structure on the other. In the church area, a lone woman stands before a mass of candles. Looking in the other direction, you can see the other clans processing into the performance area.

When the play begins, rain comes down onto the two armies battling on the dirt below, creating a wonderful mixture of mud for the rest of the performance. The witches are delightfully creepy, and the fight scenes are choreographed with the deliberate intensity of a dance. That shouldn't be surprising, as co-director Rob Ashford is best known for directing Broadway musicals like Thoroughly Modern Millie, Curtains, and Evita. The lighting in the Armory is so controlled that a shift in the lights can reveal a set piece you didn't even realize was there. Plus, the heath is inevitably used again on a couple of occasions, with our hooded friends (listed in the program as "Ensemble") filling out the cast so that it really can look like an army is marching into battle.

Branagh is the most original Macbeth I've ever seen, at one point spouting out line fragments as if he is truly mad, and at another running lines together to make even the familiar "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech ring with new resonances. He's also the only Macbeth I've ever seen who managed to outshine Lady Macbeth. (Her part is so well written, not even Patrick Stewart was able to completely eclipse his co-star in the play on Broadway.) This isn't to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth. Best known as River Song in the Doctor Who television series, Kingston is coldly manipulative as Lady Macbeth, even when passionately kissing her husband.

The rest of the cast is relatively unknown, but standout performances were given by Jimmy Yuill as Banquo and Scarlett Strallen as Lady Macduff. Yuill appeared in the Royal Shakespeare Company's famous production of Nicholas Nickleby and then later as Captain Jamy in Branagh's Henry V. He also played the Friar in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, Constable Dull in Love's Labours Lost, and Corin in As You Like It. Strallen I had not heard of before, but she apparently does a lot of musical theatre, and replaced Ashley Brown in the Broadway production of Mary Poppins.

Tickets have got to be hard to get, but there are a limited number of rush tickets available for $19. If it's at all possible for you to see Macbeth, see it! This is a performance you do not want to miss.

MACBETH