Independent Shakespeare Co.’s 2013 Production Of Macbeth

For me, summer in Los Angeles means free Shakespeare. The Independent Shakespeare Co.’s Griffith Park productions are what excite me the most about summer. This summer they’re putting on Macbeth, As You Like It, and one non-Shakespeare play, She Stoops To Conquer, written by Oliver Goldsmith.

Last night I caught their production of Macbeth, and it was fantastic. I was seriously impressed by this show, and that’s even with having gone with high expectations. The cast is excellent all around, particularly Luis Galindo, who is phenomenal as Macbeth. Also, there were moments when Lady Macbeth had me spellbound, and that I think is a difficult role.

The three witches have a strong presence in this production, appearing in several scenes, sometimes taking on the supporting roles of attendants and such. They’re dressed in white, in great contrast to the rest of the cast, who are in dark, somber colors. In the first scene they repeat “Fair is foul and foul is fair” to a drum beat. The rest of the company joins in, marching in place, and this leads directly to the second scene, where the Captain tells Duncan of the battle. The witches and others remain on stage until the Captain’s wounds make him faint.

In Act I Scene iv, when Duncan says, “O worthiest cousin,” one of the witches stands upstage, watching. It’s interesting, because you could take it that the witches are sort of controlling things behind the scenes, or that they just enjoy watching their predictions come true. Either way, you get the sense that they are part of a destiny that is inescapable. When Banquo embraces Duncan, he actually lifts him.

Lady Macbeth seems ambitious from the start. Also, interestingly, there is an air of magic about her. In Act I Scene v, she creates a circle on the floor with small stones. And it is one of the witches who acts as messenger, telling her the king is coming. Lady Macbeth then steps into the circle for “Come, you spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.” When Macbeth enters, he embraces her within the circle, which is great, symbolically binding them.

This production has many excellent moments. In Act I Scene vii, Lady Macbeth breaks a bit after “I have given suck,” as if the memory of their mysterious child is still difficult for her, and Macbeth holds her. This is such a wonderful moment, as it brings Macbeth to his wife, and this is after he has decided against their plan. But after this moment, he is once again ready to proceed. It’s interesting, because Lady Macbeth seems so honest and vulnerable in that moment, that Macbeth of course has to embrace her. But you could also wonder if she did this purposefully to bring Macbeth around again to the plan.

It is one of the witches to whom Macbeth says “Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready/She strike upon the bell” (in Act II Scene i). So again it is the witches that attend upon Lady Macbeth. In Act II Scene ii, there is the sound effect of an owl prompting Lady Macbeth’s line. It’s one of the few things that felt unnecessary. Later in that scene Lady Macbeth is excellent when making the decision to take the daggers. What an incredible moment.

In Act II Scene iii, the Porter comes from the audience to answer the knocking. He pees into a bucket, and then breaks out of Shakespeare for a bit to explain what the word “equivocate” means. I always have mixed feelings about adding modern jokes to Shakespeare’s works. In very small doses, it can work – like just a word or a look, a nod to the audience. In this production, this goes on a bit long, with him borrowing an iPhone from an audience member to look up the word, and then dropping it into the piss bucket. Of course, if you are going to throw in some modern humor, this is the scene for it (and I do love this actor – he was particularly wonderful as Falstaff in Merry Wives a couple of years ago). At the end of that scene, two of the witches bring suitcases on stage for Malcolm and Donalbain.

In Act III Scene ii, Macbeth frightens Lady Macbeth when he says his head is full of scorpions. This is another wonderful moment between these two, and they do a great job showing the changing dynamic of their relationship. (By the way, in Act III Scene ii, Macbeth says “scorch’d the snake,” not the emendation “scotch’d.”) In the next scene, it is the Porter who plays the third murderer.

A bit of color is added to the costumes when Lady Macbeth wears a green dress with a purplish fur for the banquet scene. Banquo does appear, rising from beneath the table, in this production. There is also a bit of interesting staging with his head appearing as a course.

There is an intermission, coming after the line “We are but young in deed” at the end of Act III Scene iv.

The second half begins with Act III Scene vi (Scene v being cut, as usual). The two men hold newspapers, those being the source of the information they share with each other, and with us.

In Act IV Scene i, the witches’ cauldron is a silver trash can. Rather than have the appearance of the apparitions, each witch drinks from the cauldron and then speaks the apparition’s lines, as if channeling the spirit. Then when the witches say “Come like shadows,” they give Macbeth a drink. The witches then circle him as the procession of kings that Macbeth sees.

There is another bit of color added, with Lady Macduff’s purple dress. The last lines from this scene are cut, when her son, having been stabbed, says, “He has killed me, mother.” I think Act IV Scene iii is a tough scene to do well, but this cast’s Macduff and Malcolm do a really good job with it. The three witches surround Malcolm when he talks about how he is worse than Macbeth. He then dismisses them with a small gesture when he’s ready to reveal his true intentions to Macduff. Macduff is absolutely perfect in the scene where he learns of his wife and children’s deaths.

In Act V Scene i, Lady Macbeth sleepwalks onto the stage from the audience. Interestingly, the Doctor embraces her before he says her malady is beyond him. She responds to his embrace, taking him to be Macbeth. This works to make her situation even more heartrending. And then, just before she says “What’s done cannot be undone,” she seems perhaps to come out of her spell, seeming to really see the Doctor and the Gentlewoman for who they are. Is she still asleep, or is she offering this truth from the safe guise of sleep? It’s a really wonderful moment.

Seyton is the Porter in this production, and after he tells Macbeth that Lady Macbeth is dead, there is a nice long moment before Macbeth gives that famous speech. (Though now that I think of it, Macbeth might have left out the first two lines and begun with “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”)

The fight between Macbeth and Macduff is done really well, with lots of blood. In this production Macduff finally kills Macbeth far upstage and does not cut off his head. So when he has the line about Macbeth’s head, he indicates the body. The three witches are present at the end for Malcolm’s speech, and then remain on stage, one of the witches saying, “When shall we three meet again?” And that is the last line of this production, ending where it began, as if perhaps to suggest that the troubles are not over.

This was an excellent production. If you haven’t seen it, I believe there are ten more performances between now and August 31st.

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.