England, 1997 (Week One)

Last year we made plans to visit England during the holidays. I am downright resentful this did not happen. Not that we should have gone regardless, that would have been foolhardy. If I had had my way we would have gone as soon as possible after my mother died. I wanted a family trip with my high school aged children, perhaps our last big journey together for some time, perhaps ever.

England is the land of my ancestors, and I wanted to share that with them. They have touched British soil on two occasions. Neither of them remember very much. They were one and two, and three and four years old in 2006 and 2007.

Old Sarum, Wiltshire (1977/1997)

My first visit was in 1977, the summer of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Twenty-five years ago, in June 1997, my girlfriend and I visited. It was her first time off the Americas.

At that time I was in the middle of my tenure with Dobama’s Night Kitchen, and treated these vacations like archaeological excursions, digging for inspiration by seeing as many shows as possible. Unfortunately, our first choice was the notoriously awful Edward & Mrs. Simpson musical Always (see post) and I felt particularly bad about this because I had campaigned to see it.

We made for it the next night by checking out The Herbal Bed by Peter Whelan, an RSC production at the Duchess. Based on one historic document in which Shakespeare’s son-in-law Dr. John Hall sues a man for slandering his wife (stating publicly that Susanna Hall “had been naught with Rafe Smith”) it starts like some romantic fan-fiction until it suddenly becomes The Crucible.

Tue, June 3: “Everyone was sympathetic and you hated yourself for rooting for anyone … ethical matters are rarely ever cut and dry. They’d fuck it up in America, change the ending or something.”

Teresa Banham, Richard Hawley
"The Herbal Bed"
(Duchess Theatre, 1997)

At that time, having spent the better part of five years either managing Guerrilla Theater Company or Dobama’s Night Kitchen, I was a bit obsessed with the new theater company I just assumed I would inevitably found. Every road trip we took I would observe spaces and customs.

“Ice cream is served in theaters during the interval by vendors in the house. You can place a drink order before the show and have it waiting for you in the lobby.”

“My next theater project should be called The Other Theater Company”.

Our third night we got half-price tickets to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) performed by the present iteration of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Even then I understood that the star of the show were the topical references, and not the text itself. There was a line in the “comedies” section where they bust into the refrain of Wannabe by the Spice Girls.

Matthew: Meanwhile, the six brothers fall in love with six Italian sisters, three of whom are contentious, sharp-tongued little shrews, while the other three are submissive, airheaded bimbos.

All three sing in falsetto: "Tell me what you want, what you really, really want!"
Adam: (aside) I want to hit you in the face with a shovel, that’s what I want.

Clive Carter. Jan Hartley
"Always"
(Victoria Palace Theatre, 1997)

Everybody laugh. Comedians are horrid.

On our journey, I also picked up a number of books. Big books, little books. Perhaps most significantly visiting the bookstore at the National Theatre I purchased Hamlet: A User’s Guide by Michael Pennington. The RSC veteran breaks down the entire text by each evident action, and not some psychological interpretation, which I found refreshingly clear. Since that time I have ordered dozens of copies to provide for actor-teachers.

The book was also an invaluable tool when I would direct Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark two years later. Reading over my journal, my thoughts were roiling about my life as an artist.

Sun, June 8: “I worry my artistic future. Sometimes I wish I were younger, or that I was clever when I was younger – that I had accomplished more earlier, so I would be further along now.”

“Look at the Reduced Shakespeare Company. They started ten years ago in California, putting on a simple, goofy show … and they have touring companies, radio programs and an ongoing run in the West End … I want to start an ensemble, and have a theater, and teach classes …”

My anxiety was no doubt fueled by the fact that I was about to turn twenty-nine.

"Hamlet: A User's Guide"
by Michael Pennington

At the same time, I refer almost daily to my “Eliot Ness play” which I never did write. He played a role in These Are The Times, which also remains unfinished. I was inspired by the books on the so-called “Torso murders” I had read, and Paul Heimel’s biography. But also Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy of existential urban mysteries, and the current fascination with modern popular jazz ensembles like the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

I didn’t actually want to start my own theater company, ego made me think that I did. What I really wanted to do was to write plays. We rounded out our first week with a trip to Canterbury Cathedral, where I conceived of and jotted down a short play which I only recalled a couple of years ago, typed up and posted at New Play Exchange. It is titled Museum. You should read it.

To be continued.

The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged) (1999)

Nick Koesters, Allen Branstein & self
(Beck Center for the Arts, 1999)

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) was either:

1. Written by people who love Shakespeare for people who hate Shakespeare.
2. Written by people who hate Shakespeare for people who love Shakespeare.
3. Written by comedians for an audience of absolutely no one.

The bane of critics everywhere and to the delight of audiences everywhere, this show has been produced constantly since first produced by the Reduced Shakespeare Company at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1987. The wife and I saw the original in 1997, near the end of its nine year run at the Criterion Theatre in London’s West End.

Classify this one as Shakespeare (not) On Stage, as not only does Shakespeare not appear, but the entire play ostensibly celebrates Shakespeare while simultaneously reinforcing those elements that everyone hates about Shakespeare.

It is also horribly dated, including gags that are casually sexist and outright racist, that is, unless you think the idea of three white guys deciding to interpret Othello as a rap song as “edgy.”

This month, I will appear for only the third time onstage at Beck Center, and each time in the Studio Theatre. Eric Schmiedl’s adaptation of King Lear opens May 31. Seven years ago, I played Chris in Eric Coble’s The Velocity of Autumn.

Twenty years ago, with Nick Koesters and Allen Branstein, we performed The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).

I was shocked when director Roger Truesdell asked me to consider the role, especially playing against two accomplished comedic actors. “But Roger,” I said. “I’m not funny.”

“Yes, you are,” Roger said. “You’re just afraid people might think you are.”

The one saving grace of Complete Works is the note on the front page which reads:

“... it’s also important to keep the show fresh and timely by updating the many topical references as events warrant.”

To put it another way, you are free to change the script to make it funny. As a result we felt entirely justified in not only changing the late-80s pop culture references to late-90s pop culture references, but also anything else that wasn’t funny.

What we couldn’t do was write a different play, so we still labored with the Titus Andronicus cooking show, including my lame impersonation of the then-87-year-old Julia Child (huh-larious) and the aforementioned “Othello Rap.” At least we could pretend to be appalled, like you do, and to change truly offensive verses like:

Now Othello loved Desi like Adonis Loved VENUS
And Desi loved Othello cuz he had a big … SWORD

Into:

AL: Desdemona, she was faithful, she was chastity tight
DAVID: She was the daughter of a duke
NICK: Yeah, she was totally white

My voice was more Ad Rock than Ice Cube.

We also had great fun tweaking other local companies. Our changes are in red.

AL: One popular trend is to take Shakespeare’s plays and transpose them into modern settings. We have seen evidence of this with Shakespeare’s plays set in such bizarre locations as the lunar landscape, Nazi concentration camps and even Akron.
DAVID: Akron?
NICK: Who does Shakespeare in Akron?

Later, I had a discursion regarding ‘The Apocrypha’ or those works whose authorship was once in dispute, referred to as “‘The Lesser Plays,’ or simply, ‘The Bad Plays.’ And yet, not all of The Apocrypha are completely without merit … except Edward III.”

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival had produced the only-recently canonized Edward III that past summer. One night a contingent from the company were in the audience and they booed my little joke.

“Oh,” I ad-libbed,” you’ve seen it.”

I went on to to describe what a fascinating play Troilus and Cressida is, but then bore the shit out of absolutely everyone in telling the story, which is coincidentally what I also did for Cleve Shakes audiences in 2018.

We changed scripted references about Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Boris Yeltsin to Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani and Vladimir Putin, which are more relevant now than they were twenty years ago.

The inclusion of Putin was odd, though, because the run of the show ran over into the year 2000, and Vladimir Putin was only just inaugurated on January 1st of that year -- we changed the reference from Boris Yeltsin after the announcement.

No one knew anything about him, except the name, so I suggested we change Nick’s recitation on "Chernobyl Kinsman" (Two Noble Kinsman, get it?) to include this exchange:

NICK: Does it have Vladimir Putin in it?
DAVID: It doesn’t have anybody pootin’ in it, Nick.

He's a monster. We didn't know.

We threw in Ally McBeal jokes, Jar-Jar Binks jokes, references to The Blair Witch Project, and my personal favorite, when Nick’s Macduff emerged with "the usurper's cursed head,” he was, in fact, holding a replica of his own head, which was the same prop used when he played the lead in Macbeth at Beck Center the previous season.

It gets better. As prescribed in the stage directions, “(drop kicks the head into the audience)” -- but then Nick hollered, "GOOOOOAAAL!!!!" and ran in a tight circle, before sliding on his knees and ripping off his shirt to reveal a Brandi Chastain inspired black sports bra (Google Women’s World Cup 1999.)

The script as written closes with a familiar theater cliché:

"If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends. If you didn't, tell your enemies."

By the second weekend we were sold-out in spite of receiving some scathing reviews from those aforementioned critics who simply hate the idea of this admittedly dumb little play.

AL: If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends.
DAVID: If you didn't ... you must write for the Free Times, man.

Exit, pursued by a laugh.

Beck Center for the Arts presents "King Lear" directed by Eric Schmiedl, May 31 - June 30, 2019