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Sunday July 7th, 2002
By JON KAPLAN
THE FRINGE FESTIVAL'S WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Part One
You can't avoid bumping into the Bard at this year's Fringe. He's
everywhere, at almost every venue. You have your choice of works,
including a history of Shakespeare's life, several takes on whether
or not he wrote the plays that brought him fame, and a few unusual
versions of his plays. The only thing you won't find is Will S. in
his original garb, the text done more or less in full.
For that, you'll have to go – am I allowed to say this in a
Fringe report? Hell, why not? – to The Dream in High
Park (A Midsummer Night's Dream), to Oakville
(Macbeth), wait a few weeks to see in-town productions of
Shakespeare in the Rough (Othello) or Driftwood
Theatre (As You Like It), travel down the 401 to Stratford
(several shows) or later in the summer north to Barrie (A
Midsummer Night's Dream) and Newmarket (Romeo And Juliet
and The Tempest).
But if you want to stay in Fringe territory, check out Hart
House's production of Antony And Cleopatra, staged
outdoors at Philosopher's Stage on Queen's Park Crescent. It
opens Wednesday (July 10), running simultaneously with a Fringe show
(see below) co-produced by Hart House.
Check out NOW's theatre listings for these and other productions.
Here's a look - the first of several - at some of the Shakespearean
highlights and lowlights of the Fringe Festival.
A PALPABLE HIT
That's what the foppish Osric says during the final duel in Hamlet,
but it applies equally to Shakespeare's World Cup, a co-pro
between Upstart Crow and Hart House. What you get are
the Bard's four best-known tragedies – King Lear, Macbeth,
Othello and Hamlet – each represented by a soccer team from a
specific country. It's a follow-up to last year's Fringe show by
Upstart Crow, Shakespeare's Rugby Wars, which cast the three parts of
Henry VI and Richard III into the mould of a rugby match.
This year's piece is harder to squeeze into a sports framework. Not
only do the four stories have to be told simultaneously, but the
playing field/stage at Trinity College has to be strewn with the
appropriate bodies by the end.
Hmm... maybe not so hard in a contact sport.
Authors Matt Toner and Chris Coculuzzi have done a fine
job, of course with the help of Shakespeare's text and stories. And
you know you're in for a less than serious 75 minutes when three
dark-garbed women (shades of Elvira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the
West from The Wizard Of Oz) ride their bikes onto the playing field,
cackling wildly. Turns out they're the witches from Macbeth, and they
strip off their inky cloaks to reveal cheerleaders' outfits. Guess
which team they're rooting for, using the "Fair is foul" speech as a
crowd rouser?
If you have trouble following the action, you get the help of
Shakespeare's character Jack Falstaff (Stephen Flett) and
Elizabethan playwright Thomas Middleton (Toner) as commentators, with
historian Raphael Holinshed (Seamus Dudley) doing interviews
on the field. And if that's not enough, Shakespeare himself
(Coculuzzi) is one of the refs, aided by John Heminge (Samantha
Nesbitt) and Henry Condell (Daniella Marchese). Why those
last two "guys"? Heminge and Condell were members of Shakespeare's
own troupe and joint editors of the first folio of his works.
But you don't have to understand those inside jokes to get lots of
laughs from this show. As Denmark (Hamlet) pounds Italy (Othello) and
England (Lear) upends Scotland (Macbeth) in the semi-finals, there
are so many visual and verbal jokes on and off the field that you'll
have to see the show several times to catch them all.
In Elizabethan soccer, apparently, teams rely on excessive deaths,
strong soliloquies and a high body count. The script – with ad
libs from Toner and Flett – is full of corny references
(Macbeth, noticing Banquo's ghost, yells, "I see dead people"),
double entendres and bad puns (the old English king with three
daughters is Lear of the Rings at one point), and the patter the
commentators throw out is dazzlingly quick.
The authors have also cleverly woven Shakespeare's narrative into
their own scenario, as when Hamlet goes to England in the original
story and Hamlet the soccer player is traded to the English team on
the field. Earlier, Hamlet had worried about "to kick or not to kick"
on a penalty play.
It goes on and on. Yeah, some of the material doesn't work and some
of it's silly, but there's so much maniacal energy and a nod to the
greatness of the originals that you can't help but give the show a
trophy.
LOVERS LOST
That's not the case several blocks away at the Annex Theatre,
transformed into a rave club for Romeo/Juliet Remixed. It's
Spark Productions' version of the classic teen love story,
written and directed by Laura Mullin and Chris Tolley,
complete with beads, hot bodies, bubble machines, glow sticks,
glitter and balloons.
The result? Lots of style, little content.
The audience is part of the rave scene at Club Verona; we're given
coloured beads that identify us as Montagues or Capulets at the start
of the show. And as the text-messaging and flashing signs remind us,
Tuesday is Capulet night and Thursday Montague night at the space.
Presiding over it all is DJ True Daley, replacing the duke in the
original story.
It takes a while for our lovers to appear, and they're suitably
buffed and sensual in the persons of Joel Gordon and Sara
Moyle. But that's about as far as it goes, and why the production
falls down. Mullin and Tolley have done a minimal job in the
storytelling department.
What works for the show is the demanding, never-ending beat of the
music and the high-energy choreography of Nicola Pantin. But
we're never involved in the unfolding tale or shown the emotions of
Romeo, Juliet or anyone else in the show. The video sequences –
down in the washroom catacombs of the rave setting – are a
clever device, though little more, but I kinda liked the cellphone
text messaging the lovers use in place of the balcony scene. The
episode gives a contemporary ring to the original as nothing else in
the show does.
I don't mind that Shakespeare's text is largely discarded –
there's no one way to tell a story – but I do resent the
insipid dialogue and doggerel rhyme put in its place. There's no
humour in Juliet angrily saying, "Romeo, Romeo, where the hell are
you?" or Mercutio's transformed death line, "A plague on both your
asses." And things go waaaay off the rails when, after Juliet's had
sex with Romeo in a washroom cubicle, the Nurse (Dale Boyer in
a white vinyl nurse's outfit) comments, "Fee, fi, fo, fum, somebody
here smells like Montague's cum."
In short, a palpable miss.
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