Shakespeare in Kabul (book)

American theater is in crisis, audiences have not returned in numbers since Covid. And how do we engage the new, young audience?

Theaters are closing. Those that remain are sticking to the familiar titles. New Broadway shows are based on IP, well known movies and books.

And yet, we believe in the unique elements of live stage performance. It is an art form which may not thrive in late-stage Capitalism, but we imagine it will outlast the apocalypse. See Station Eleven. See Mister Burns.

There is something compelling about the story of a production coming together, whether it is a hard-won success or a famous flop and there seems to be a special place, as always, for Shakespeare.

Most recently, I have been reading Shakespeare In Kabul by Stephen Landrigan and Qais Akbar Omar. In 2005, shortly after the Taliban was driven from power by American forces, an American playwright (Landrigan) and a French director, Corrine Jaber, decided to bring Western theatrical tradition to Afghanistan. And inspired by the rich Afghan tradition of poetry, Jaber decided it must be Shakespeare.

The narrative begins with Landrigan, but fortunately soon turns to Omar, a native of Kabul, who performed as interpreter for the company, and whose creative input would prove not only transformative but vital.

Cultural sensitivity is a thing, and having decided to produce a play by William Shakespeare in a nation invaded by foreign factions and traumatized by a fundamentalist regime for over thirty years, then choice of title was fraught with potential pitfalls.

Fortunately, they had begun the search for potential performers before choosing what they were even going to play, because their Afghan counterparts were those who insisted it must be a comedy, that their people had endured too much tragedy. The director was hoping to engage women in the performance, and perhaps the best opportunity in Shakespeare for an equal number of roles for women, is Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Labour’s is a challenging play in that it would seem that Shakespeare composed it with a very specific audience in mind. B-plots include the ethnically insensitive depiction of an amorous Spanish nobleman and the nonsensical yet pretentious ramblings of a philosopher. These are diversions, however, from the main story – a king has decided on behalf of his best friends that in order to become great men they must commit to a period of fasting, small sleep, intensive study and the complete absence of women.

Then some women show up. Not just any women: a princess and her own band of friends, charming, intelligent, and witty, and like the boys, four in number. Comedy happens. And this was just what these artists were seeking in Afghanistan in 2005.

Christine Castro & David Ellis
"Love's Labour's Lost"
Cleveland Shakespeare Festival (2000)

You can quite handily edit the text down down to these eight – and the two servants between them – and be left with an entirely satisfying, romantic evening. The Cleveland Shakespeare Festival did just this in 2000, Eric Schmiedl directing.

“They’ve tamed 'Love’s Labour’s Lost', the most problematic of Shakespeare’s comedies … through sleight of hand, with sets and props no more extensive than sunglasses and scarves [CSF] have paired it down to ninety minutes of pure enchantment.” - Cleveland Scene

In this instance, Schmiedl punctuated the romantic interplay with brief addresses chosen from popular fashion and advice magazines. These kinds of artistic choices can irritate purists – one local critic sniffed, “bar pick-up advice and dating-poll conclusions preface and diminish the perceptive beauty of Willie’s insights of the heart.”

But context is everything, and the summer of 2000 was still really the 1990s. And anyway, the Plain Dealer disagreed, calling the production, “a triumph of wit, ingenuity, and clarity.”

Reading Shakespeare In Kabul (a book which was later expanded with the title A Night in the Emperor's Garden) occasionally reminded me of Salesman In Beijing, Arthur Miller’s own account of when he was invited to direct Death of a Salesman in Beijing. In his telling, Miller is remarkably disinterested in Chinese traditions of performance, insisting his team cleave to American theatrical conventions, even as they were speaking in Mandarin.

Jaber, to her credit, wanted very much for the play to feel familiar to the intended audience. Translated into Dari, names and locations were changed to bring the story into a majestic Afghani past.

Even so, there was an issue with the “Muscovites.” Labour’s hilarity reaches its climax when the young men decide to play a kind of prank on the women, disguising themselves Russians. Reaching this part of the rehearsal process, the acting company flew into open revolt, which was shocking to the Westerners. Surely, the Afghans would love this opportunity to mock their former oppressors, and could not understand why their actors felt this was in the very worst taste.

And this is the part I love. And this is why I love to produce the works of William Shakespeare. No, let me take that a step further – this is why I love creating live theatrical productions:

Leila Hamgam, Breshna Bahar,
Marina Gulbahari, Sabar Sahar
"Love's Labour's Lost"
Kabul, Afghanistan (2005)

The French director chose to remove herself from the conflict, from the rehearsal, to – as I understand it – bring down the temperature of the situation. Left alone with the very unhappy actors, Omar – the translator – suggested the men disguise themselves as Indians. Indian culture and in particular Indian “Bollywood” films are wildly popular in Afghanistan, something the Western producers could not have appreciated.

As a result, the performance culminated with the King and his men dressing like characters from their favorite films, singing and dancing and making fools of themselves to impress and delight the women to the sheer and absolute joy of every crowd for which they performed.

The story still ends as Shakespeare conceived of it, the festivities abruptly concluding with the news of the death of the princess’s father. She must go, to mourn, and to ascend the throne, with a promise to return in one year if the men will remain true.

There is much more to the story. The freedoms promised when international forces drove the Taliban from power in 2001 were all too short lived. And one theatrical production seems like such a small thing. I guess that’s why we continue making them.

See also: 

Love's Labour's Lost (2016)

"Love's" in the Time of COVID-19

Sources:
"Back From the Beach, Two summer offerings lure us from shore to show" by Keith Joseph, Cleveland Scene (7/6/2000)
"The Bard’s Version of ‘Friends’" by Linda Eisenstein, The Plain Dealer (7/1/2000)
"Dumbed Down, Cleveland Shakespeare Festival mauls two of the Bard’s comedies" by James Damico, The Free Times (7/5/2000)

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival (book)

There needs to be a word for someone who knows a lot about the works of Shakespeare, but comes far short of a Shakespearean. Last week, Ian McKellen appeared on Stephen Colbert and delivered “The Strangers’ Case” speech from Sir Thomas More (c.1591-1593). That man, McKellen, is a Shakespearean. He lives and breathes the work, all the work, even work like Sir Thomas More, which isn’t actually Shakespeare.

I have, on occasion, referred to myself as a Shakespearean, but only as short-hand. I do know much more about Shakespeare than your average person, and probably more than you. I can deliver a few speeches by heart, and deliver them well, I think. But that only goes so far. I am Shakespeare-passing, Shakespeare-fluent, Bardophilic.

I am not a Bardolotist. I do not worship him. I am also not a Shakespeare fantasist, one who receives or creates bold theories about Shakespeare the man, and warmly keeps and shares them as a kind of truth. We know nothing about Shakespeare’s personality, or his personal decision-making processes, apart from that which is apparent: He lived, he married, he fathered, he acted, he wrote plays, he was financially successful in business, he died. That’s it.

Like a lot of the cursorily Shakespearean, I do not know early enough about his contemporaries. I just read Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival, Stephen Greenblatt’s recent biography of Christopher Marlowe, which I was disappointed, though not surprised, to find that it includes not much more definitive information about its subject that one of the countless Shakespeare biographies.

I have stopped reading Shakespeare biographies altogether – no one knows anything about him and never will.

No, as in those other books, including Greenblatt’s own, the author finds a man (usually a man) who was in the same place and at the same time as Marlowe, and tells us an awful lot about them. He then infers many purely fictional things Marlowe may have done or experienced as a result of these theoretical associations.

Even worse. I did learn one thing for certain: That one portrait which is generally said to be of Christopher Marlowe? That isn’t even him. It was discovered at Cambridge in the 1950s and nearly discarded. It is unsigned and features no name, only the date and age of the sitter. This means it could be a portrait of any number of people, including Marlowe. But it is far more likely not to be him. However, I have seen this painting so many times, having been told that it is Marlowe, and so it has become him. But it’s not.

Marlowe has a fanciful reputation as the “bad boy” to Shakespeare’s married-with-children vibe. Born With Teeth by playwright Liz Duffy Adams (Dog Act) is a great recent addition to the SDU (Shakespeare Dramatic Universe™) depicting the writing relationship between the established Marlowe and the inexperienced Will (note: they were both born in 1564) collaborating on the plays that would become Henry VI parts one and two. Duffy plays upon the mythology of Marlowe – queer, brash, and probably a spy for the Queen. The great thing about Adams's play is how it suggests that our dearth of knowledge about Shakespeare may have been intentional; in brief, during a period of authoritarianism, the best way not to get murdered is never to share your thoughts.

Was Marlowe even queer, though? Greenblatt focuses his attention on three of Marlowe’s most familiar works; Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, and Doctor Faustus, describing how each was terribly transgressive for its time. I have only ever seen Edward II (longer title: The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer) in a solo adaptation that I will describe to you over drinks some day. This play is held up as evidence of Marlowe’s sexual identity,

anonymous sitter, unknown artist
"ad 1585, of his own age 21"
Found: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
(Seriously. It's not him.)

The play centers on the (married) monarch’s intimate, possible romantic relationship with Piers Gaveston, to the neglect of his royal responsibilities. However, depicting a homosexual relationship does not necessarily make for a gay-positive play. While the time, attention and gifts Edward lavishes upon Gaveston enrages members of the monarch’s inner circle, would they not have been as troubled had Gaveston been a woman? The king is portrayed as a lovesick fool, unworthy and incapable of maintaining the crown, in much the same way his descendant Edward VIII would be some six hundred years later, over a woman who was considered unacceptable as a King's consort.

It is true, centering a queer relationship must have been a sensation. But the play Edward II is as homophobic as The Taming of the Shrew is misogynist or The Merchant of Venice is antisemitic. And just as Katherina is gaslit and abused into docility, and as Shylock receives a forced conversion into Christianity, Edward is assassinated in a grotesque parody of sodomy. Not merely conquered, but humiliated.

I mean. It was a different time. By today’s standards Marlowe isn’t so much controversial as he is in bad taste. The lesson of Doctor Faustus is entirely conventional. A mortal man sells his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty-four years of receiving pretty much anything he wants. In the case of Faustus, that means learning everything there is to know, and at first that includes standing on far flung mountain tops to view the heavens, and flying through the skies – riding a motherfucking dragon – to examine all the world.

In the end, however, when there is nothing left to know, he is reduced to visiting Rome to slap the Pope and debasing himself by seducing Helen of Troy, which just isn’t as special as you think it might be when you know she may not have been that into you otherwise. The last hour of his life, before he is literally dragged to Hell, Faustus laments and tries to pray and regrets and despairs. How much more devout can a play get? He FA, he FO. The play may have been offensive to the censors, but I can’t imagine a single audience member who didn’t take in this drama and then go straight from the playhouse to the church.

DID YOU KNOW ..? Once Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to Britain, the English did not first use the verb "smoke" to describe the act of lighting the leaf and inhaling the smoke produced. They called it drinking. They drank tobacco.

Hamnet (book)

“He is himself, not a play.”
- Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020)

Last week we saw the Broadway tour of & Juliet at the Connor Palace. As the show began, and the character of William Shakespeare took the stage, I had the sinking feeling I was about to be subjected to yet another foolish depiction of the Bard – like the one in Shakespeare In Love, Dark Lady of the Sonnets or – God, no – Something’s Rotten.

I mean, I knew what I was getting into, a fantasy “What if” Juliet hadn’t died, laced with Max Martin’s greatest hits. I just didn’t know HE was going to be a part of it. Because he’s not a character in his Romeo & Juliet.

As it happened, I really enjoyed & Juliet (so did my 96 year old aunt) and so much more than Something’s Rotten, which I really do not like. The former is a celebration of queer empowerment, the latter a middling 21st century meta-musical that still manages to be as hokey and immersed in the patriarchy as The Producers, which it so hard is trying to be,

But why, I asked, even as I was bopping along to "Backstreet’s Back" and "Oops …", why do we do this, and by we I am absolutely including me, why do we, why are we compelled to participate in the Shakespeare Industrial Complex (SIC) not content to merely overproduce his work (which is itself a problem and basis for another discussion) but to contribute to the lore, to expand upon the characters, the plots – and the man himself.

Corey Mach as William Shakespeare
"& Juliet" Broadway Tour (2025)

Why, in short, all the Shakespeare fan-fiction? Because, to be sure, it does not often rise above that.

Since I first picked up and then put down the novel Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, over three years ago, I have read two other historical fictions about Tudor-Stewart era playhouses, Jinny Webber’s Bedtrick and Mat Osman’s The Ghost Theatre. But this one, Hamnet, kept reemerging in conversation. “Have you read ..?” All the recommendations, all the references, the book itself, staring at me from a shelf, a table, the floor, a pile of other books.

I finally read it: difficult to get into, then for the past week impossible to put down, only to conclude poorly, as this achingly well-told story of a mother’s grief was in the end contrived merely to connect the lost boy to the famous play. I felt cheated. I got angry. I still am.

This novel is inspired by the life and untimely death of Hamnet Shakespeare, the playwright’s only son, fraternal twin to Judith, younger sibling to Susanna.

Stephen Greenblatt

What I do like about this book is that it focuses on Agnes (one of two possible first names for Shakespeare’s spouse) who is in this telling a fascinating, magical person, strong and confident, gifted with second sight, a deep understanding of herbal medicine, even a falconer!

Where there are gaps in the historical record (or perhaps I should say gap, one big, fact-free gap) it is Agnes who acts, who has agency in spite of familial oppression and public scrutiny. It is she who decides that if they are to be together, she must become pregnant. Later, to realize his independence from his family – and from Stratford, where she can see he is unhappy – it is she who convinces him to follow his bliss to London.

There is even the suggestion that she wanted the second-best bed left to her in his will, because, after all, it was her bed! The one available fact that folks have used to divine the unhappiness of their union, in this telling he was merely serving her desire, and put it in writing.

 Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth
"The Northman" (2022)
A film directed by Robert Eggers

And she does, and they do, because he wrote a play called Hamlet.

Then, the plague. She saves (or believes she saved) Judith, but loses the boy. And she suffers, so deeply. It was unbearable. I put the book down. I picked it up again. Because I was made to care about this woman, and I wanted to see her make her way through her grief, and to reunite with her estranged husband, the one who made a successful living in a playhouse, far from home.

Time and again, folks have strained to tie the name of Shakespeare’s son to that of his most famous play. Stephen Greenblatt made note – and O’Farrell echoes in her prescript – in the article, “The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet,” (link) that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable in the 1500s, which is far too easy an explanation.

My wife’s name is Toni. Tori is also a name and only one letter different from hers but if I called her “Tori” she would say, “that’s not my name.” And Greenblatt has been criticized for just making shit up.

Hamlet and Hamnet are similar names. But apart from that uninteresting detail, there is nothing to suggest Hamnet's death in any way inspired the composition of Hamlet.

Because the play Hamlet has nothing to do with a dead child.

Because there are no twins in Hamlet. And though he did write a few plays that did feature twin, none are named Hamnet, nor Judith (there are no Shakespearean characters named Judith at all, nor for that matter, Susanna). And twins used for the purpose of comic mistaken identity was and remains a common trope.

Ed Frascino
The New Yorker (1991)

Because Shakespeare didn’t choose to name his main character Hamlet for this particular revenge tragedy; it is based on an ancient myth about a Norseman named “Amleth” – which would be a terrible name to have to say upon an English stage, you couldn't finish a sentence.

“This gentle and unforced accord of Amleth thith thmiling to my heart.”

“Lord Amleth ith a printh out of thy thtar.”

“Come hither, my dear Amleth, shit by me.”

And tho on. And because Shakespeare himself did not even choose to change the name Amleth to Hamlet, someone else did that, writing a different revenge tragedy that included a protagonist named Hamlet in 1585, which was a few years before Shakespeare even started writing plays, and fifteen years before he wrote Hamlet.

Here’s the thing. The reason many have sought evidence that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare is because there remains scant evidence of who the man was, so they try to draw connections from the text to his contemporaries, those about whom much is known. And while these “Adventures in Authorship” may be harmful, so is drawing bogus connections between the text and what very little we do know about the man himself.

"Hamnet" (2025)
Directed by Chloé Zhao

Speculation, for the purpose of fiction, is all well and good, but we must cleave to the facts as we know them, because these speculations, very often stated as fact, become accepted as fact. The Queen never asked for a play about Falstaff in love. Shakespeare never said “William the Conqueror came before Richard the Third!”

And Hamlet was not written for Hamnet, which is unfortunately the climax of O’Farrell’s book. And her depiction of Agnes witnessing a performance is perplexing, because it is in witnessing the scene between Hamlet and the ghost of his father (performed, as has been often suggested, by Shakespeare himself) that she comes to understand her husband’s grief – but it’s not there, not on the page, not on the stage. She describes a young boy playing Hamlet, which is absurd on a couple levels – Hamlet isn’t a boy, he was probably played by Burbage, how the hell could a boy player carry the rest of the show, etc. etc.

Why does it matter, you may ask? Why does it make me, as I have said, angry? Because. I didn’t want to read it. Then I was glad I was reading it. Now I am unhappy that I read it.

Greyson Heyl and Nic Scott Hermick
"Twelfth Night (Or What You Will)"
Great Lakes Theater (2025)
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Agnes was beside herself to learn that her husband had written a play using their son’s name (even if it’s not really his name) and made the journey, for the first time in her life, out of Stratford and all the way to London. London! Can you imagine? To see a play! She’d never seen a play! Most people those days never had! (Actually, they had, but whatever.)

And what would she have actually seen? A fully grown male actor, upon a stage before a rowdy, packed audience, playing a Danish prince, who is by turns mopey, arrogant, somewhat creepy, pretentious, passive-aggressive, misogynist, and murderous, who is ultimately killed in a duel, the stage littered with the bodies of many other characters whose deaths this Hamlet character was directly responsible for.

Honestly? He should have invited her to see Twelfth Night. Agnes may have found that one much more relevant and affecting. It has much more to say about grief and acceptance, and it has twins in it.

Great Lakes Theater presents "Twelfth Night (or What You Will)" by William Shakespeare and directed by Sara Bruner now through April 6, 2025 at the Hanna Theatre, Playhouse Square.

Hamlet & Me (Part XII)

Gertrude & Hamlet
Laura Perrotta, Laura Welsh Berg
Great Lake Theater, 2017
Photo: Roger Mastroianni

"What then? What rests?"
- Hamlet, III.iii

To conclude, I have seen more live stage productions of Hamlet than any other play by Shakespeare, except for perhaps As You Like It, which is a shame because, as G.B. Shaw said, “It is not as I like it.” But the latter is more commonly produced than the former at a rate of at least ten-to-one.

There are, of course, the recent stage productions of Hamlet adapted for television and much beloved by my contemporaries, those starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Paapa Essiedu, Andrew Scott or David Tennant. Oddly enough, I have never made the time to watch any of those. The fact is, I love to hear Shakespeare in a theater, live or filmed, but have little patience for him on the small screen.

I can think of three downright terrible live productions of Hamlet. I haven’t made mention of any of them in this series of posts, but I will say the principal sin of each of these productions was a lack of inspiration. Hamlet is such a weird play, the man himself such an odd character, you can’t just decide to “do” Hamlet. When you aim at a king, etc.

A couple years ago I recounted my experience thrilling to Clayton Jevne’s One-Man Hamlet at the Minnesota Fringe (you may watch the entire show online) and I am still smarting that I did not make time to see the Israeli Cameri Theatre troupe perform the play entirely in Hebrew when they visited Cleveland in 2008. I have yet to see Hamlet performed in another language, but I know the text so well that I think doing so would be a fascinating thing to do. I will not pass on another such opportunity.

If I were to elevate one Hamlet that I have enjoyed above all others, that would be Laura Welsh Berg at Great Lakes Theater in 2017. This was not a gender-concealed retelling, like the Asta Nielsen film or my Beck Center production, Berg was playing Hamlet as a man, in Elizabethan dress and on a stage design to evoke the Globe. It was the most “traditional” production of Hamlet I’d ever seen, and it was a revelation.

While I do not agree with what Edward P. Vining characterized as feminine “weaknesses” in the Dane’s psychology, I have found that Hamlet’s transparent misogyny becomes something quite else when communicated by a woman. Disappointment instead of derision. Empathy instead of anger. Berg powerfully embodied all of the grief and rage and condescension Hamlet holds for his father, his uncle, Polonius, while also making the “nunnery” and “closet” scenes, in which he traumatizes first his lover and then his mother, truly affecting for all parties.

Recently, I read the script for the new play The Motive and the Cue by Jack Thorne. Inspired by the books Letters From an Actor by William Redfield and John Gielgud Directs Richard Burton in "Hamlet" by Richard Sterne. It is an imagined dramatization of the rehearsal process for that 1964 Broadway production.

I find that this script is most successful at describing to an audience just what it is a director does – and what they should not do – as the legendary though cash-poor Gielgud endeavors to shape the performance of the besotted but powerful Burton in a role that he, Gielgud, knows all too well, or perhaps much too well, while Burton struggles to make the role his, Burton’s, own.

It's a play I'd like to attend. Better still, I'd like to play Gielgud. I think I could. And anyway, no one ever asked me to play Hamlet.

Hamlet & Me (Part XI)

Edward P. Vining was a Union Pacific executive in the 19th century and a part-time thinker. He independently developed a unique theory regarding the three extant versions of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: The First Quarto of 1603, the Second Quarto of 1604 and the First Folio of 1623.

Vining believed each subsequent version was a revision of the one previous, each an improvement upon its predecessor on the way to an ultimate, perfect vision of Hamlet which the Stratford man either did not complete or that has been lost to history.

That’s not the unique bit. No, Vining’s grand theory focuses on what he perceived as an increasing “femininity” in the character as these draft progress, as the Dane becomes ever more thoughtful, emotional, and hesitant to act. Soft, if you will.

That Vining's theory is entirely misogynist goes without saying. What is interesting, from a narrative standpoint, is how Vining suggests it was possible that Hamlet was born female, that it was kept a secret, and that she was raised to pass as male. Vining set this all down in his book The Mystery of Hamlet: An Attempt to Solve an Old Problem (1881).

Vining’s theory may have been lost to history, but that it was elevated by Danish film star and producer Asta Nielsen, who used his theory when deciding to play the title role as the premiere offering from her new production company, Art-Film. This 1921 silent film version is quite possibly the best adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet ever made.

Asta Nielsen in "Hamlet"
Art-Film, 1921

Here’s the thing: We know "Young Hamlet was born" on "that day that our last King Hamlet overcame [Old] Fortinbras." A gravedigger tells us so. (HAM V.i) But what if word traveled faster than the old Danish King, and that it was reported that it was he who had been slain? To secure the throne in a time of war, the new mother, Queen Gertrude, announces a son! By the time Old Hamlet returns, the lie has been widely accepted and is held as truth. The girl is raised a prince, only her mother and father aware of the deception.

This is all prologue. The question then is how this all affects her, Hamlet’s, relationships with Ophelia, Horatio, her mother, the new king Claudius, everyone? In 2006, I directed another production of Hamlet at Beck Center for the Arts, inspired by Nielsen’s film, and starring Sarah Morton in the lead, supported by an outstanding company of local artists.

“Since Hansen is experienced and demonstrably astute, there are no embarrassments here and much to appreciate. Most to be appreciated is his shrewd casting of the lady Hamlet. Sarah Morton is a palpably enchanting stage presence – smart, wry, covertly vulnerable and hesitantly self-confident. Properly attired, she's also tall, thin and still tomboyish enough to get away with the physical aspects of the evening's masquerade." - Damico [2]

"Oozing misery and nerves, Morton plays a Hamlet pierced by grief and drunk on death. She handles the language flawlessly, and several of her scenes are the best I've ever seen – her death, and the "nunnery" scene with Ophelia (a sensitive Rachel Lee Kolis)." - Eisenstein [3]

Hamlet & Horatio
Sarah Morton, Nick Koesters
Beck Center, 2006

One of the original aspects of this adaptation, one highlighted in Nielsen’s film, is the love triangle between Hamlet, Horatio and Ophelia. Each love goes unrequited and misunderstood, until the final moments of the tragedy. In the 1921 film, Horatio cradles the dead Hamlet and, in an unintentionally comic moment, discovers her breast. In our 2006 version, Hamlet instead chooses to “out” herself:

“In the final scene, a dying Hamlet places a kiss on Horatio's lips, revealing her true feelings. It's a poignant moment In a credible production of the fiendishly difficult, challenging play, one that keeps the integrity of the language and drama intact.” - Heller [1]

To be concluded.

The complete "Hamlet: The Drama of Vengeance" starring Asta Nielsen and directed by Svend Gade & Heinz Schall (1921)

Sources:
[1] "Review: Hamlet" by Fran Heller, Backstage, 10/16/2006
[2] "Shakespearean Mélange a Trois: A Bardic Orgy of Drag, Gender-bending and Shaky Celibacy" by James Damico, The Free Times, 10/4/2006

[3] "Hamlet @ Beck Center" by Linda Eisenstein, CoolCleveland.com, 10/1/2006

Hamlet & Me (Part VIII)

"Hear the sentence of your movèd prince."
Courtney Brown, Xanthe Tabor, Rich Weiss,
Suzanne L. Miller, David Hansen (Mr. Hansen does not appear.)
"The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet"
Guerrilla Theater Company, 1994

By the time I turned thirty, I had performed in only two Shakespearean productions, three if you count a pre-recorded voice-over.

Junior year at Ohio University, I played Friar John in Romeo and Juliet, who has three lines. For the Guerrilla Theater production I directed, I played the prince, but my voice came from on high, as though from a public address system. This meant, of course, that I needed not be present for every performance.

I later learned this conceit was also employed by John Gielgud in the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet, arriving as the Ghost in the form of a massive shadow in the shape of a helm.

A video recording of the Gielgud/Burton Hamlet was released in the mid-90s, and I spent the summer of 1998 watching that several times and taking notes.

Having decided to direct a Shakespeare, you need to decide what version of the play you wish to see and hear, and then cut the script to fit your conception.

Stealing edits from others provided my primary education. The cuts from our college production of R&J were the basis for my production. We had taken a paperback and spent a rehearsal having the cuts dictated to us as each of us crossed out the lines in pencil, so I had them all, not just the cuts for my one scene but for the entire play.

"Mark me."
John Gielgud, Richard Burton
(Mr. Gielgud does not appear.)
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1964

In the time before personal computers, this was really the only way to do it. Today I can make the edits on my laptop and provide the company with a show-ready document. But then they wouldn't have the physical script, to see what was eliminated as well as what was kept. That's fine if you don't want your actors requesting to have lines restored, but what if you do?

I had opinions about what additional material I wanted for my production of Hamlet, and what additional lines I wanted to cut, but using this Burton production as a guide gave me great confidence to have something to begin with.

And in the case of Hamlet, who better to steal from than Gielgud? He was his generation’s Dane, surviving audio recordings are a testament to the style, grandeur and pathos he lent to the role, for decades and in numerous productions. It’s a shame we only have a film version of Olivier’s Hamlet and not his.

I watched the 1964 video, making the same cuts as Gielgud made, and in this way learned about which versus a great person of Shakespeare believed were not as necessary as others. Then I cut just a little deeper. Cutting the text is the director’s first pass at directing their actors, before you even know who those actors may be. You can change the motives and intentions of a character by eliminating certain lines of thought and exposition, or what other characters have to say about them.

I was greatly influenced by Pennington’s book to strip away centuries of assumptions about the characters and established tropes of performance. The goal was to focus specifically on the words they say as written on the page, and not the ways they have been said by others in the several productions I had already seen.

Is the Queen correcting the King for getting the names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wrong, or is she changing the order of address to lend their names equal weight as a form of flattery? Because that is what the King and Queen are trying to do at that moment, convince old friends to betray him. 

Does Hamlet know he and Ophelia are being listened to when he asks, “Where is your father?” or is that another way of inquiring, “Where is your keeper?” Because that is in keeping with everything else Hamlet is saying at that moment, you need looking after.

Alison Garrigan, Tom Cullinan
Promotional Photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

There are motivations for these deliveries which are clear and obvious, and then there are those which try to think a step ahead of the playwright and detract from the matter at hand.

I did entertain the notion of having Hamlet echo one of the King’s lines from the first scene after the stabbing and the poisoning; “So much for him.” This I did not do, though I did have Tommy punch Brian in the face on the line, “Follow my mother.”

Like “Welcome to Earth.” If you know, you know.

By fall I had my cut. Hamlet might go quite swiftly in three acts, with two intermissions, like this:

• Act One: In which Hamlet goes from "I don't know what to do" (Too, too solid flesh) to "I know what to do!" (The play's the thing.)
• Act Two: In which Hamlet puts on a play, murders the wrong guy, gets exiled to England, and finds he hasn't accomplished anything. (How all occasions do inform against me.)
• Act Three: In which all occasions literally inform against Hamlet and he dies just as he has evolved into a person who might indeed have made a good ruler. 

The rest is silence.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part VII)

Thomas W. Cullinan
Promotional photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

Tom Cullinan and I met when he auditioned for a show at Dobama’s Night Kitchen. Having spent some time living in Chicago, he was returning home, so he told me, to look after his mother following the death of his father.

I sat in the house, he sat on a singular chair on the stage, wearing a long coat and, in my mind’s eye, smoking a cigarette. Was he? It is hard for me to imagine that he was not.

The audition in question was for a long-form improvisation inspired by MTV’s The Real World. As I had scant experience in improv, and that his resume said that he had, and in Chicago of all places, I was intimidated. But I have also always scorned men in dusters who smoke during auditions, and so we sized each other up and decided to become friends.

Besides, the fact that I was seated in the position of authority, evaluating him in a theater space he had practically grown up in, I had to respect his équanimité. He became an invaluable player in our late night adventure.

Over the next couple years we would grow close, but not too close. It was good to have a new partner in theater, someone I hadn’t gone to school with, someone with a broader experience than I had, an entirely different creative toolbox. Someone to push me out of my carefully guarded comfort zones.

I asked him to direct my first play, The Vampyres, about a goth coffee house. He suggested we visit New Orleans at New Year’s Eve. You know, as “research.” Goodness, I never would have dared.

Yes, we spent many evenings drinking and smoking, primarily at La Cave du Vin, and elsewhere. Tommy was the toastmaster, the speechmaker. I was always uncomfortable before crowds, he lived to be there. I asked him to be Best Man at our wedding.

Brian Pedaci, Tom Cullinan
Promotional photo for "Hamlet"
Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999
Photo: Anthony Gray

However, it was he who made getting too close impossible. I would invite him out for a private evening, just the two of us, and he would bring along one or two. There was a crisis in my relationship with Toni and he simply did not let me talk to him about it. He spoke too quietly in bars. He was pretentious – and not in the same way I am pretentious.

He was complicated. We’re all complicated, but Tommy was really complicated.

My time as Public Relations Director at Dobama Theatre was coming to a close. I’d never worked anywhere for three whole years and I was anxious to move on. I loved my time there, but I was turning thirty and feeling constrained, I guess. I had no idea what was happening next, what I did know was that I had a burning desire to create an epic, independent production of Hamlet, and I knew who I needed to build the company around.

My man is Tom Cullinan. The reasons for him are plentiful. I love him. I can work with him. He is an experienced actor with just the right everyman quality to his personality, but also the right amount of class, charisma and charm. And guile. And romance. And because he’s not perfect.
- December 23, 1997

To be continued. 

Hamlet & Me (Part VI)

Twenty-six years ago today, I decided that I was going to (somehow) direct a production of Hamlet. The following are contemporary accounts from my late twenties, about two books that were major inspirations in the development of my thoughts.

August 4, 1996

Yesterday, Dad presented me with a recently written book called "Modern Hamlets." It's pretty cool. It is a succinct look at a dozen 20th century actors who have played Hamlet, and how they set about performing the soliloquies.

At first I thought this emphasis on the soliloquy was precious. Why so specific, what is the point? A few chapters in and I see how, by zooming in on the soliloquies in specific, and not each performance in general, we get a brief distillation of each actor's Hamlet.

Reading this, reading how the great acting men of this century tackled what some feel is theater's greatest role (if not play) makes me long for directing Shakespeare. "Romeo & Juliet" was difficult, "Hamlet" would be more so, but I would like to try.

January 26, 1997

I can tell you this; thanks to Kenneth Branagh, no one ever has to produce an uncut "Hamlet" ever again. He has done it, he has done it on film, and regardless of what records it broke in the Guinness Book of World Records (first uncut Hamlet on film, longest Shakespeare on film) he has proven without a doubt that producing unabridged it is unnecessary.

However, Branagh's film highlighted all of the stuff that is normally removed. For example, everyone removes Fortinbras and everything to do with Norway (see: the Mel Gibson 1990 film) which robs the story of its depth. Branagh even turned Polonius into a much more political, scheming man, instead of just a doddering old fool, which was infinitely more complex and interesting, and still just as funny.

However, the Broadway 1995 production (Ralph Fiennes) kept all of these elements while still paring down the text. It is hard work, cutting down Shakespeare the right way. But it is also rewarding.

June 24, 1997

"Hamlet: A User's Guide" by Michael Pennington. I got it in England and read it very fast; another amazingly helpful text on the subject of what is most probably going to be my next Shakespeare.

My next project should be called the "Bad Epitaph Theater Company." I can't remember at what point in my life I came up with that one, it's old, I know it is, I don't know who talked me out of it, but if I start with a production of "Hamlet" (and there hasn't been one in this city since 1991) that would be a good name.

Anyhow, Pennington has done this play a dozen times, in most of the leading male roles, even Fortinbras, and has quite a bit to say about the subject.

December 23, 1997

I have finally decided to direct "Hamlet." Pennington reminds us that no one decides to produce this play without having already decided who is playing the main character. I didn’t believe this to necessarily be true until now. I have chosen a Hamlet, and now am obsessed with producing it.

Sources:

"Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies" by Mary Z. Maher (Iowa, 1992)

"Hamlet: A User's Guide" by Michael Pennington (Limelight Editions, 1996)

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part V)

"It's me. Hi."
Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Julie Christie
Hamlet, 1996

Look. I come to bury Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, not to praise it.

But how can you argue with success? It’s a brightly colored production with manically animated set pieces and swirling camerawork – Hamlet as an action film, which is fine! The character has long been described as a man who cannot decide, who is unable to “take action.” But he does! He’s always on the move! And Branagh makes him vital and exciting, not brooding and torpid.

I visit schools all over, have done so for years, and if there is a film version of Hamlet most shown in these schools, this is positively that one.

However, in the act of presenting the complete text, a four-hour endeavor, the entire undertaking feels rushed, under-rehearsed and not carefully considered.

Watching the film for the first time in a recently renovated Centrum Theatre on Coventry, I was impressed by the first soliloquy, “O, That this too, too solid flesh …” Not for the rendition itself (which is fine) but how long the take is. Branagh delivers the piece without a cut, and then the scene continues unbroken as Horatio, Barnardo and Marcellus enter to share the news of the ghost.

Long, uncut takes like this allow an actor to display the range of their stagecraft, and it’s like watching a good play, up close. Take for example Claudius (Derek Jacobi) seducing Laertes (Michael Maloney) into committing acts of treachery. It’s a great scene from the play, and one usually cut to the bare facts.

Unfortunately, as the film goes on these long takes feel like a method to rush the filming along. For the “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquy, which should be one of the high-points of any production, Branagh thrashes about with his limbs, frantically gawping as he trashes a map room. It may be emotionally appropriate, but the director in me wanted him to try it again. I was led to believe the whole production was so big he decided that there wasn’t time to get it right.

Other crimes, in no particular order:

• Scary, scary Brian Blessed
• Sexy Dane sex
• Rapier javelin
• Smushed Ophelia face
• Christ pose exit
• Jack Lemmon

And perhaps most egregious, the speech “How all occasions do inform against me” is depressing, not rousing. It is not “St. Crispin’s Day.”

As my father once told me, “If you aim at a king, you must kill him.” That summer I had already started to fantasize about staging some future production of Hamlet, and I would take my time in conceiving it.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part IV)

Brian Blessed & Kenneth Branagh
Henry V, 1989

At the age of 26, Orson Welles directed and starred in what is generally regarded as the best film ever made, Citizen Kane. That was in 1941.

At the age of 26, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in what is generally regarded as the best adaptation of Shakespeare to film, Henry V. That was in 1989.

Side note: At the age of 26, I directed my first Shakespeare, Guerrilla Theater Company’s production of "Romeo & Juliet" and lots of people liked it. That was in 1994.

An independent film, and therefore not widely distributed, I believe I first saw Branagh’s Henry V in early 1990, and we all lost our shit.

Recently acolytes to the genius of Shakespeare we, the magnificence and success of this movie heralded nothing less than a renaissance of Shakespeare on film, which indeed came to pass. Whether or not you choose to credit Branagh with this achievement, 1990s cinema (and beyond) was fairly awash with Shakespeare, including Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990), Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995), Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), Twelfth Night (1996), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) and Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet (2000) as well as adaptations like 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), O (2001) and She’s the Man (2006).

Branagh’s next cinematic Shakespearean outing solidified his reputation among Gen X aged theater nerds. Much Ado About Nothing is a bright and goofy take on what has become one of my very favorite of the Bard’s scripts, and this time Branagh expanded upon his acclaim by casting a number of high-profile American actors including Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton.

This is one of the truly impressive things about Branagh; great actors and movie stars want to work with him, a trend which continues to this day as his Poirot adaptations pop with familiar names and faces.

Even before Henry V, Branagh had staked his reputation with his Renaissance Theatre Company. Like Welles before him and his Mercury Theatre, the work began onstage. Branagh directed and starred in stage versions of Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and others as well as classic works by other playwrights. He also produced radio adaptations for R&J, King Lear and Hamlet, all of which I acquired and listened to on cassette.

I could go off on how his audio adaptation of Romeo and Juliet inspired me to direct a production myself, or how I read that John Gielgud was unhappy with how Branagh insisted on recording King Lear (Gielgud played the lead) with scant rehearsal. This last detail will be relevant later.

Michael Maloney (center) & ensemble
In the Bleak Midwinter (1995)

For his third Shakespearean outing onscreen, I had hoped Branagh would choose, well, absolutely any title but Hamlet. Much Ado, for all the adoration heaped upon it, is not great. There is a lot of mugging and eye-rolling meant to indicate to an American audience which lines are meant to be funny, and before that he had directed the modern noir mystery Dead Again (1991) which is unintentionally hilarious. I didn’t think he was yet a good enough director to summit the Dane.

When it was announced that Branagh’s Hamlet would feature the complete text, entirely unabridged, it was clear he was pointing to the bleachers. He wouldn’t be merely directing a Hamlet, he wanted to make the Hamlet. I was very worried.

In 1995, Branagh wrote and directed In the Bleak Midwinter (US title: A Midwinter’s Tale) a brief, black and white comedy about the company of “am-dram” performers putting on a holiday production of Hamlet. It’s a silly and delightful piece of work, full of inside baseball for thespians, and Branagh doesn’t even appear. His surrogate is the film is Michael Maloney, who opens the film with the monologue about the anxiety of acting as a profession, a performance which is all the more enjoyable when you realize Maloney is doing a spot-on impersonation of Kenneth Branagh.

Midwinter is a celebration of the act of creation, a love-letter to theater artists everywhere, and in its way, I felt the film was an apology for the grotesque and unhappy excesses of his Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). Maybe Branagh's Hamlet would be good after all.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part III)

I have this poster.

December 1990, the school of theater had arranged a tour of London and Stratford. We got to see Royal Shakespeare performances of King Lear, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, and Chekhov’s The Seagull.

I was still pretty jet-lagged when we rolled into the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for Lear, and literally pinched myself through the show to stay awake. The most compelling reformer was He Who Played Edmund (that’s a hint, by the way). In the first scene, Edmund says little, but gracefully endures the verbal bullets cast his way by other for his “illegitimate” birth.

When all have gone, this Edmund took his position, center stage, one foot forward, and delivered the most cutting and hilarious rendition of the “Bastard” speech I have ever heard, feet planted, hands at his sides, he just said it. His voice, his face, and the text doing all the work.

This was Ralph Fiennes, twenty-eight years old, and three years from Schindler’s List and international acclaim.

The next day he was Berowne in Love’s Labour’s. For the “Love’s Whip” speech he did the same thing as with Edmund's soliloquy, he just said it, standing there. And I thought, "Oh, this is his bit. He does this.” For some reason, that left the twenty-two year me unimpressed.

Then came Schindler’s List, and Quiz Show, and then he performed Hamlet at the Belasco Theater on Broadway in 1995, where it was quite the palpable hit. And we went to see it!

Once more, I was seated in the very back row of a theater to see a live production of Hamlet. After being subjected to his uncle’s condescension and his mother’s entreaties, the Prince is left alone on stage, and recites “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt …”

Fiennes stood, one foot forward, hands at his side, and just said it.

I leaned over to my girlfriend and whispered knowingly, “He does this."

Ralph Fiennes as Hamlet
Belasco Theatre, 1995
Photo: Mark Thompson

Of course, he did so much more, too. Hamlet has several soliloquies and monologues, each of which move the plot forward and track the progression of his psyche throughout the play. “Too, too solid flesh” is the rock bottom; if he does have a suicide soliloquy it is this, and not “To be or not to be.” That first speech mentions “self-slaughter” as a viable (if damnable) option. If anything, “To be …” is an argument against entropy.

Regardless, Fiennes stood, for that one moment, and was on the move for the rest of the show. I recall in particular his delivering Hamlet’s advice to the players as he worked with them to set up chairs for the performance. Kinetic, engaged – a participant.

I stood, too, during the curtain call. I even hollered “Bravo!” which is slightly embarrassing to recall. Was it that good? I think he was, he was certainly the best Hamlet I had seen to that date, which included GLT’s 1989 production, Zeffirelli's 1990 film, and another local production in 1991, the inaugural offering from the Cleveland Theater Company, an entirely unabridged production directed by Tom Fulton and featuring every Equity actor in town.

Ralph Fiennes won a Tony Award for Best Actor for playing Hamlet in 1995. The next year would provide us a high-profile, star-studded film adaptation about which I have so many thoughts.

To be continued.

Hamlet & Me (Part I)

"Heaven and earth, must I remember?"
Spring 1989

Junior year at Ohio University, I was preparing a soliloquy from Hamlet, the one that begins “O, that that this too, too solid flesh …” The day I presented it in workshop for our voice and movement teachers, I was asked why I had chosen this particular piece.

I could have been honest and said, “I don’t know.” I could have said it was the first monologue in the first script I picked up yesterday. I can’t remember what I actually said, but I am sure I tried to bullshit my way through. I was worried I might be asked to choose a different piece, and I’d already worked on this one for over an hour and I did not want to start again.

But they wanted to know, what interested me about the character? Why Hamlet? And the more they asked, the more embarrassed and defensive I became because the fact was, I knew nothing about Hamlet.

I was fortunate enough, attending Bay High School in the early 1980s, that I could still benefit from the expansive liberal arts education that had been afforded to the teeming mass of my Baby Boomer antecedents. We weren’t merely offered the same English curriculum provided to every grade level (English I, English II, etc.) but quarter classes in a variety of genres and disciplines.

I took classes in Journalism, radio drama, Death in Literature, and courses in both Shakespeare Comedy and Shakespeare Tragedy. It was like a college curriculum. We even had a quarter course in Vonnegut, if you can even imagine that.

Richard Burton & Alfred Drake
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1964

For Shakespeare’s Tragedies we read Hamlet, King Lear, and Romeo & Juliet (we had all read Macbeth in eighth grade.) We watched the BBC adaptation of King Lear starring Laurence Olivier and John Hurt (1983) and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968). But we listened to the 1964 Broadway Cast Recording of Hamlet, starring Richard Burton and directed by John Gielgud.

I cannot speak for my classmates, but I absolutely loved these studio recordings. What I remember most was how Burton brought out Hamlet’s great, cynical humor, which I had missed on the page. Wry, sarcastic, incisive, bitter. The guy was an asshole, and so was I.

And so, several years later, it made sense to choose a piece from this play to rehearse for class, but as was normally the case during my undergrad years, I hadn’t bothered to return to the text. I knew nothing about Hamlet.

To be continued.

The Ghost Theatre (book)

Pengo's 2023 Summer Book Club

It is common knowledge that women were not allowed to perform on stage in public during that period when Shakespeare wrote his plays. Roles such as Juliet, Viola, Rosalind, Portia, even Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, were all (likely) first performed by adolescent boys.

However, in the early years of the 17th Century, there were acting companies composed entirely of male children. It was a thing. They played not only the women’s roles, but the men’s roles, too. Not at the Globe, however. In fact, Shakespeare was so irritated by the practice that the First Folio edition of Hamlet, printed in 1623, includes an exchange in which even a Danish prince has opinions about a theatrical convention in England that had fallen out of favor years earlier.

Act II, Scene ii: Hamlet laments the fortunes which have befallen a beloved troupe of actors who have lost patronage and must travel to make their nut. The “late innovation” Rosencrantz alludes to are the companies of boy players.

HAMLET

What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ

Even those you were wont to take such
delight in, the tragedians of the city.

HAMLET

How chances it they travel? Their residence,
both in reputation and profit, was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ

I think their inhibition comes by the
means of the late innovation.

HAMLET

Do they hold the same estimation they did
when I was in the city? Are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ

No, indeed are they not.

HAMLET

How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ

Nay, their endeavor keeps in the wonted
pace. But there is, sir, an aerie of children, little
eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are
most tyrannically clapped for ’t. These are now the
fashion and so berattle the common stages (so
they call them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid
of goose quills and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET

What, are they children? Who maintains ’em?
How are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality
no longer than they can sing? Will they not say
afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common
players (as it is most like, if their means are
no better), their writers do them wrong to make
them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ

Faith, there has been much to-do on
both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tar
them to controversy. There was for a while no
money bid for argument unless the poet and the
player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET 

Is ’t possible?

GUILDENSTERN

O, there has been much throwing
about of brains.

HAMLET

Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ

Ay, that they do, my lord—Hercules
and his load too.

Wedding feast at the house
of Sir Henry Unton
(unknown, c. 1596)

The text in italics is not present in the Second Quarto (1604) which begs the question: Why was this exchange not part of the printed text when the subject was relevant, and added long after the fad had passed? I assume (and it is only my assumption) that some cheeky, possibly embittered adult performers first improvised this bit of topical humor, and it was later added to the prompt book from which the text of the First Folio was edited.

The “Children of the Blackfriars Theatre” are the inspiration for the novel The Ghost Theatre, a novel by Mat Osman, author and former bass player for the 90s Britpop band Suede. I need to expand my repertoire of reads, because I keep getting recommended and then falling into Shakespearean pastiches. Last summer it was Bedtrick, which I enjoyed, and then there’s Hamnet which I started more than once but keep losing interest in.

I seem to have just enough knowledge of what we do and do not know about Shakespeare the man that I have little patience with anything that smells fishy. What’s great about Ghost Theatre is that the Bard is mentioned once, in passing, and only then in regards to the aforementioned whinging from Hamlet.

The courtly theater of Blackfriars is a different beast than the Globe, in that it serves an audience of greater means, and as an indoor theater can play with light and stage effects in a manner that a daylight theater cannot. And in that, it is a very interesting read, a peek into a popular entertainment that doesn’t get the wide and varied historical fiction treatment that the Globe has received.

The story also delves into the murky world of a company made entirely of “underage” actors, taken from their parents (with permission from the Queen) to perform for the entertainment of adult audiences, with all of the perils that might suggest.