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.

Shakespeare (Not) On Stage

Roderick Cardwell as Richard Burbage
in "The Great Globe Itself" (2015)
Photo by Ryan Labay

Several years ago I wrote a play about the Globe Theatre, one which described three different buildings which have used that name, from three different eras in two different cities, each which was built to feature the works of William Shakespeare. My play was titled The Great Globe Itself, and toured northeast Ohio, in libraries and schools and theaters.

Shakespeare does not appear.

Over twenty years ago, my wife and I saw The Herbal Bed by Peter Whelan, a fiction inspired by the once long-forgotten-to-history accusation of “lechery” against Susanna (Shakespeare) Hall, eldest daughter of Stratford merchant and landowner William Shakespeare. The case was found in favor of the defendant, and the play begins as a bodice-ripper which soon evolves into the Puritanic courtroom drama not unlike The Crucible in its torturous circumlocutions.

Shakespeare does not appear.

This summer I read Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will, a fanciful imagining of the hands the collected, collated, edited and published the First Folio. inarguably the most significant publication in English literature. (see my blog post on The Book of William)

Burbage dies (almost three years after Shakespeare of Stratford) and it suddenly occurs to their surviving contemporaries that so much of what gave the work its power was locked inside the heads of those who spoke his lines. If not written down, they would be lost to history. The scramble to create a proper volume of the complete works -- in fact, determining what a complete works should consist of -- is as delightful to read as I am sure it is astonishing to witness.

Shakespeare, who as aforementioned was already dead, does not appear.

Finally, my brother sent me a play script from England for my birthday; I Am Shakespeare. Written by Mark Rylance, Oscar and Tony Award-winning actor and former Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Rylance is also a notable Shakespeare-denier, an Anti-Stratfordian, one who does not believe the “Man From Stratford” (as they like to call him) wrote the works attributed to him.

And yet, Shakespeare does appear in I Am Shakespeare.

At least, a version of him does. Rylance’s play falls into that category of “debate” plays that Shaw was so fond of creating (see my blog post, Shakespeare On Stage) though is Shaw’s case the argument was on the works’ merit, not its authorship. Shaw was openly scornful of those who proposed or defended such theories.

In Rylance’s play, William Shakespeare, as a character, arrives in the present day at the garage of Frank Charlton, a man obsessed with the “Authorship Question” and who hosts an online chat program that would appear to have a small, devoted following. The program has also ruined his marriage.

(Rylance uses Charlton as his stand-in, and wrote the role for himself to perform. He acknowledges, it would seem, that many who share his unorthodox views are not successful and lauded actors and directors of stage and screen, but more likely to be tin-foil hat wearing losers.)

Shakespeare, the character, has arrived from the past or elsewhere to debate the legitimacy of his achievement. He is soon followed by Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, and Mary Sidney, all to make the same claim. Attention is also given to Marlowe, who is obviously too cool to make an appearance.

It’s all a fun exercise, and very witty, though much of the humor stems from a wide knowledge of and deep appreciation for the works of Shakespeare. You already have to be in on the joke.

When writing The Great Globe Itself I had several agendas. The play was meant to illuminate the significance of the Globe Theatre (three Globes, as I said) as a unique acting space, one specifically suited to (most of) the works of Shakespeare.

I also wanted to tell the story of the theater Shakespeare’s made legendary in such a way that anyone without any knowledge of his life or work, could appreciate and enjoy it.

Ultimately, and here’s the kicker, I wanted to see if I could get away with writing a play about Shakespeare that also suggests the "Man From Stratford" didn’t write his own works -- but that no one would notice.

You didn't notice, did you? It was probably the impenetrable accents. My mistake.

Read "The Great Globe Itself" at New Play Exchange.