Shakespeare By The Sea’s 2013 Production of King John

Why is everything in Altadena located on or just off of Lake Avenue? I feel that there are no other streets in this city. I’ve been to Altadena many times, and every single time I’ve taken the Lake Ave. exit, and I’ve never gone more than a block off of that street.  Anyway, last night I caught a production of King John at Farnsworth Park, which is located at the corner of Lake Ave. and E. Mount Curve Ave.

I first tried parking on Lake, but parallel parking on a hill is a bit tricky with my car, for it likes to roll forward even if I’m idling in reverse. I managed to get out of that spot and onto the cross street, which was much flatter terrain. As always, I got there early – at 6:38 p.m. (for an eight o’clock start). The cast was rehearsing, doing a sort of speed-through of certain scenes in their street clothes. I knew then it was going to be a good performance, because I was engaged even in this rehearsal. There were a few other early arrivals, but I grabbed an aisle seat in the front row, which is exactly where I wanted to be.

Last week I saw this company’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well in a park in Glendale, and there was a basketball court nearby. This time it was a baseball game happening in another section of the park, and there was a tremendous amount of noise. Must have been an important game. Well, important to someone. I hoped it would be over before the performance began, and figured perhaps that was the reason for the later start (8 p.m. instead of 7 p.m.).

The rehearsal seemed to be at least partially for the benefit of Constance, who was performing the role for the first time. After the rehearsal, they ran through the sword fights.

The performance was quite good. And this was a play I had never seen performed on stage before (the only production I’d seen was the BBC production). There were a couple of moments where the dialogue was lost during sword play. But really the only fault in the production from my perspective was the music. Not that the music was bad, or even inappropriate, but that it played under basically the entire play, and it’s not needed. The music is at best unnecessary, and at worst intrusive and distracting. Trust the text and your actors to carry the play. The cast is certainly good enough.

The blocking was also quite good, making the relationships clear just from how the characters were arranged in any given scene. I liked how at the end of Act III Scene i, when England and France separated again and there was the call “To arms,” everyone exited except the Cardinal, who remained momentarily upstage. That was a really nice moment. And this production had several moments like that. The blocking never felt forced.

By the way, the night’s Constance did a good job, apart from one missed entrance cue at the beginning of the second half (which was handled well anyway, and didn’t throw off anyone’s performance).

The play was two hours, including the intermission, which came at the end of Act III Scene iii, when King John has ordered Hubert to kill Arthur. If you missed the show, you still have several more chances to catch it. Performances are scheduled for Rossmoor, Ranchos Palos Verdes, Manhattan Beach, Oak Park, Hermosa Beach, Newport Beach, South Pasadena, Torrance, Laguna Niguel, Long Beach and San Pedro.

Shakespeare On Theatre (2013) Book Review

Anyone who knows Shakespeare at all is familiar with Jacques’ famous speech in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players.” But Shakespeare expressed this idea also in The Merchant Of Venice, when Antonio laments, “A stage where every man must play a part,/And mine a sad one.” And elsewhere throughout his work, in both his plays and sonnets, Shakespeare includes references to the stage and stagecraft, and sometimes features plays within plays (Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

                                                                                     

Nick de Somogyi’s new book, Shakespeare On Theatre, collects and explores the various stage references in Shakespeare’s work. As he writes in the introduction, “Whether in the relish with which Richard of Gloucester raids the props-basket, the impatience Othello barks at a premature prompt, or the anxious interpretation Bassanio places on an appreciative audience, Shakespeare drew repeated inspiration from the daily circumstances of his working life, almost as if unbidden to his mind” (page xiv).

This is not simply a book of quotations (there are plenty of those). This book provides details regarding the business and structure of theatre during Shakespeare’s lifetime, putting his words into that context. It is divided into different sections, each being an element of the theatre. The first section is “Prologues and Inductions,” and includes prologues to Henry The Fifth, Henry The Eighth and Romeo And Juliet, among others. And there is of course a discussion on the induction of The Taming Of The Shrew (and The Taming Of A Shrew).

Other sections include “Auditions, Casting, and Parts”; “Learning Lines and Rehearsing Roles”; “Props and Costumes, Notes and Rewrites”; “Theatres and Scenery”; “Fluffs, Prompts, Cues, and Snags”; and “Audiences, Critics, and Tours.” Two plays that Nick de Somogyi returns to frequently are Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (for obvious reasons), but he uses quotes from most of Shakespeare’s works, including some of the more dubious works such as The Two Noble Kinsmen and Sir Thomas More. Nick de Somogyi also includes bits from other playwrights of the time, including Ben Jonson and John Webster (Webster’s induction to Marston’s The Malcontent is particularly interesting).

One thing I appreciate is that Nick de Somogyi takes into consideration the various versions that we have of some of Shakespeare’s plays. For example, in the chapter on “Learning Lines and Rehearsing Roles,” he quotes from the Q1 version of Hamlet. Also, the book does not just include those great speeches that everyone knows, but brief theatre references like those in Coriolanus (“Like a dull actor now/I have forgot my part and I am out”).

This book helps to give you a new perspective on some familiar lines as well. For example, de Somogyi quotes the passage from The Tempest when Prospero tells Miranda how they came ashore. Many people consider The Tempest to be Shakespeare’s farewell to the theatre, but I hadn’t considered that in relation to this scene. Nick de Somogyi writes, “It is no accident that in The Tempest – probably Shakespeare’s most self-consciously theatrical play – the arch-magician Prospero’s description to his daughter of their original shipwreck refers to ‘garments’, ‘stuffs’, and ‘books’: ‘necessaries’ surely of less use to desert-island castaways than to the strolling players who might now exchange the stuffed ‘cloak-bags’ of their touring luggage…for the permanent tiring-house backstage” (page 70).

And in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Bottom and Snout each suggest writing a prologue to avoid offense and fear from the audience, this “drolly exaggerates both the permanent deference of Shakespeare’s own ‘mechanical’ trade as a playwright, and the means by which his theatre company so often tailored their plays to the specific circumstances of its premiere, transfer, or revival” (page 91).

Nick de Somogyi returns to the idea of all the world being a stage in the chapter on “Fluffs, Prompts, Cues, Snags,” quoting Sonnet 23: “As an unperfect actor on the stage/Who with his fear is put besides his part.” And he points out that great moment in Hamlet when Polonius forgets what he was saying, and how it may very well be seen as the actor playing Polonius drying on stage. Regarding poor acting, he writes: “Bad actors have always been a fairly easy target for good actors to satirize, of course. What is remarkable is how often Shakespeare returned to the theme in his Tragedies, in those moments when the human suffering they depict gains extra dimension by the sudden backstage glimpse of a performance going wrong, in the theatre of life in which we all play our parts” (page 129).

By the way, you do not have to be a Shakespeare expert to enjoy this book. It’s quite easy to follow, and includes a glossary in the back, with notes and definitions not just on certain words, but also explanations of certain phrases found in the quoted passages.

Shakespeare On Theatre is the first in a projected series on playwrights regarding the subject of theatre itself. Shakespeare On Theatre was released on April 23, 2013 through Opus Book Publishers.

(Note: I also posted this review on Pop Culture Beast.)

Shakespeare By The Sea’s 2013 Production of All’s Well That Ends Well

One thing I love about Los Angeles in the summer is the number of free Shakespeare productions all around town. In the last few years, I’ve seen free productions of Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merry Wives Of Windsor, and The Comedy Of Errors. One company I kept missing (for various reasons) was Shakespeare By The Sea. Rather than perform their season in one location, this company does two plays in various locations all over the area, one performance in each location. This summer they’re doing All’s Well That Ends Well and King John, two plays I’ve never seen performed live.

Last night I caught their performance of All’s Well That Ends Well in Glenoaks Park in Glendale. The performance was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., so I got there at 5:45 p.m. At that point they were in the process of building the stage. Interestingly, though this park is much smaller than the space at Griffith Park (for example), these guys had speakers set up, and placed microphones on the stage to pick up the actors. I had placed my blanket right in the front (I can’t stand to be behind anyone who might talk during a performance), and realized I was parallel to the speakers, but figured the actors would project enough that I could hear them.

This, it turned out, was the company’s first tour date of the summer. The crew was feeling its way around. “Next time we do this, these should go on last.” This actually worked to get me even more excited about this production. There was some trouble with the lights, as they were down one cable. The more I heard of troubles, the more I expected magic – especially as no one seemed particularly troubled by the troubles. One thing that did worry me, however, was the presence of a basketball court off stage left. I assumed (and hoped) that no one would be playing basketball during the performance (but I was wrong – there were people playing through most of the performance, even after it got dark). Well, the performance was actually a lot of fun.

Helena and Parolles engage in some playful sword business during their conversation about virginity at the beginning of the play, an interesting choice. Helena even gives him a kiss on the cheek toward the end of the scene. So this is no demure Helena. Helena is a tough role, because she does some things that aren’t all that likeable (basically forcing someone into marriage, and then the bed trick), but yet the audience has to really be on her side at a certain point. I think this Helena did a pretty good job, and made several interesting choices. I particularly liked her in the scene with the Countess when she admits her love for Bertram.

There is some silly business regarding helping the King up, and then helping the King back down. (The King seems uncoordinated and somewhat lazy rather than ill.) Helena makes a show of producing the medicine and giving it to the King. He is cured almost immediately, on stage (the actor even losing the long white wig he wore). It’s played for laughs.

Interestingly, when Helena kisses Bertram at the end of Act II, we see a hint of love for her in him at that moment. This works to make the ending more believable and also happier.

There is an intermission, coming just after Helena’s speech in Act III Scene ii. During the intermission, one member of the company serenaded the crowd, and folks walked through the crowd selling raffle tickets. (I bought one, but didn’t win. No matter, as it’s a good way to support the group.)

The second half begins with a short battle scene, during which we see the theft of Parolles’ drum. For the bed trick, Diana blindfolds Bertram. Then when Bertram kisses Helena, music swells.

The cast, for the most part, is quite good. Stand-outs for me were Parolles and Bertram. I did feel that there was a bit too much business added. I understand that when playing in a park, there is that tendency to go for bigger gestures and more silliness, but there were times when they went too far in that direction, particularly in the portrayal of the King.

By the way, this is a breezy production, coming in at two hours (including the intermission). If you missed yesterday’s performance, you still have several chances to see All’s Well That Ends Well. Performances of this play are scheduled for Rossmoor, Whittier, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Lakewood, Newport Beach, South Pasadena, Torrance, Irvine, Rowland Heights, Santa Ana, Chino Hills, Rancho Palos Verdes and Woodland Hills. You can check out the calendar on the company’s web site: www.shakespearebythesea.org.

I’m excited to see what this company will do with King John.

Shakespeare Study: The Reign Of King Edward The Third

I'm nearing the end of my Shakespeare study. June 2013 was month number forty-two. This month I read The Reign Of King Edward The Third. (Yeah, I'm into the apocryphal plays, with just a few more to go.) The Reign Of King Edward The Third was published anonymously in 1596. A second edition, based on the first, was published in 1599. A modern spelling edition was published in 1760 by Edward Capell, who first suggested the play may be by Shakespeare. In Act II Scene I, this play includes the line “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” The line is spoken by Warwick. That line is also the last line of Sonnet 94.

The New Cambridge Shakespeare published an edition of King Edward III, edited by Giorgio Mechiori. And that’s the book I started with. It has a fifty-page introduction, lots of notes, and a textual analysis. In the introduction, Mechiori talks about a possible ban of the play as explanation of why it wasn’t included in the First Folio. Mechiori writes: “Critics have looked for some satirical comedy of the period as the occasion for the Scottish protest, but no certain identification has been made. Is it not more likely that the offence was caused by a revival on the London stage of the recently printed Edward III, where scorn is poured on the King and people of Scotland? The fact that this was not a comedy, but a history, and that the appearance of the Scots in 1.2 provided the only comical episode in a humourless play, was liable to stir the anger of the people so mercilessly satirised. The only solution was to have the play ‘speedily amended and stayed’, i.e. withdrawn from public performance” (page 12). And then: “There was of course no question of lifting the ban (if one existed) on the play after the accession in 1603 to the throne of England of King James of Scotland, who may have originated the veto five years before. So after a time, although some booksellers still had copies in stock, the play would have been completely forgotten. Under such circumstances, even if Shakespeare had had a hand in the writing of Edward III, by the time Heminges and Condell prepared the 1623 Folio they would hardly have remembered or thought of including, alongside the early histories and comedies which were still alive on the stage, a play which had totally disappeared from it a quarter of a century before” (page 13). This edition was published in 1998.

Related Books:

- Shakespeare’s Edward III  edited by Eric Sams  -  Eric Sams argues that Edward The Third is the work of William Shakespeare alone. This book contains the full play, with lots of notes, many of which compare phrases from this play with Shakespeare’s known work. In the “Synopsis” chapter at the beginning, Sams writes, “From now on, the main themes of love and war will be further intertwined by the presentation of each in terms of the other. The King will besiege a prospective mistress, yet woo France like a bride; ‘how gently had we thought to touch thy breast’ (1349) is addressed to that country, not the Countess” (page 5). Later in the same chapter Sams writes, “There is an overriding moral; those who make passionate vows are taught salutary lessons. Edward risks losing his queen, Warwick his daughter, John his kingdom, Charles his dignity and Salisbury his life” (page 12). In the chapter titled “Early Commentary, up to 1760,” Sams writes, “Indeed, the ‘private friends’ among whom certain sonnets had circulated (Meres 1598) would also know that Shakespeare was in Southampton’s service; so the Edward III episode where a poet-secretary is commissioned to write a love poem for his lord’s use would command special attention” (page 150). Regarding the authorship, Sams writes, “There was good reason for its lasting anonymity. It may well have been the play described in a complaint to Lord Burghley from an Edinburgh correspondent on 15 April 1598: ‘that the comedians of London should scorn the king and people of [Scotland] in their play; and it is wished that the matter should be speedily amended lest the king and the country should be stirred to anger’ (Chambers 1923, i.323). The king in question was James VI who only five years later would become James I of England and rule both realms until his death in 1625. No wonder that Edward III was never published under Shakespeare’s name, not even posthumously in the 1623 First Folio, although by then the correspondences among that play, the poems and sonnets, and the works in general had become complete, manifest and quantifiable” (page 150). In the chapter titled “The Case For Shakespeare,” Sam writes, “Scores of unusual words and ideas first recorded from Shakespeare and universally accepted as his typical coinages are in fact found earlier, throughout Edward III, long before there is any evidence that the canonical play concerned was written or performed, let along published” (pages 171-172). Sams is also convinced that Shakespeare is the author of Edmund Ironside, and devotes a section of the book at the end to this claim. In that section, Sam writes, “So the conclusion thus far is not an unknown Anon. but Shakespeare. The Ule concordance (1987) permits a direct comparison between Edward III and Ironside. The former (Ule 1987 I, 195), has a total vocabulary of 3,724 different words (counting each inflexion separately) in 2,646 lines (including stage directions); the latter (ibid., 469), on the same basis, has 3,036 different words in 2,157 lines. Thus the unusually large word-stock of Edward III works out at 1.41 per line; and this is exactly matched by the word-stock of Ironside, which is also 1.41 per line. The precise correspondence plainly points to the same playwright at about the same period; and Hart in effect identifies him as Shakespeare” (page 213). Published in 1996.

- Edward III  by William Shakespeare  -  This volume is The Royal Shakespeare Company Production of the play, this edition having been prepared by Roger Warren. In the introduction Warren writes, “Apart from an unreliable reference in a bookseller’s catalogue of 1656, the first suggestion of Shakespearian authorship did not occur until 1760, when Edward Capell included Edward III in a volume preliminary to his complete edition of Shakespeare (1767-8) on the grounds that ‘there was no known writer equal to such a play’ and to allow his readers to form their own opinion about whether the play was by Shakespeare” (page xv). This volume includes the line “Read, Lod’wick, read” in place of “Read, lord, read,” and as the line is spoken by King Edward, it actually makes more sense this way. This emendation was suggested by Karl Warnke and Ludwig Proescholdt. This volume also uses the word “armada” in place of “armado” (New Cambridge) or “Armado” (Eric Sams) in Act III Scene i. Published in 2002. 

Miscellaneous Book:

- Beginning  by Kenneth Branagh  -  This autobiography focuses on the early part of Branagh’s career, both on stage and on film. The book begins with a quote from As You Like It: “I will tell you the beginning, and if it please your ladyships you shall see the end, for the best is yet to do.” And then each chapter begins with a quote from a Shakespeare play. Early on he talks about seeing Derek Jacobi perform Hamlet, and then later of course he talks about his own experiences playing Hamlet on stage. There is quite a bit about the beginning of The Renaissance Theatre Company and its first season. The last section of the book is all about making his film version of Henry V. Published in 1989.