Tag: Tragedy

William Shakespeare’s Richard III—8 June 2024

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Me with the Richard III poster at the Globe

As part of a Literary London study abroad course on crime and justice in British literature, I assigned William Shakespeare’s Richard III. It was a marvelous bit of serendipity that Shakespeare’s Globe was putting on that very show while we visited London. Even before the Globe posted their summer 2024 season, I knew we would visit the recreated theatre where Shakespeare’s plays debuted—but getting to see a world class production of a play we are studying in the theatrical setting the Bard would have known was an amazing educational opportunity.

The Globe’s production, directed by Elle While, was absolutely amazing. Michelle Terry played a Richard who was exceptionally funny—I don’t think my students realized from reading the play how witty and clever Richard actually is—while also being casual, energetic, conspiratorial, and irrationally unhinged at the requisite moments. She dominated the stage space, even for being a relatively smallish person, and drew eyes to her wherever she was on stage at any given moment. One element of her performance that especially stood out was the crowd work. The same was true of Helen Schlesinger, who masterfully played a city-trader style Buckingham. Between Terry and Schlesinger, they effortlessly engaged with the groundlings standing near the stage—from the time they noticed a man who had nodded off while leaning on the stage to the time when Schlesinger came down into the crowd and took someone’s beer. For modern audiences, trained by contemporary theatre conventions to sit silently and observe, rather than participate, this kind of crowd work gives a taste of what the theatre must have been like in 1593(ish) when the play was first performed.

The Globe theatre stage for Richard III

Stylistically, the play had an interesting blend of modernization and traditional elements, which drew out aesthetic and thematic elements. On the thematic level, one of the most obvious modernizations was the incorporation of direct references to Donald Trump. This included added dialogue, like Richard quoting the infamous Access Hollywood tape as part of his self-aggrandizement, and Richard’s supporters wearing red hats during one portion of the play.

On the visual level, there were blended costumes, with some characters having more traditionally Elizabethan inflected costumes and some having entirely modern costumes. Rivers (Em Thane) and Grey (Tanika Yearwood), for instance, were clothed in ruffs, doublet, and knee breeches, but wore modern sneakers. However, when Thane transitioned from Rivers to the Commissioner, she put on a modern British police commissioner’s uniform. Richmond (Sam Crerar) was costumed in boots, ripped jeans, a multi-colored shirt, and a worn brown leather bomber jacket with red rose patches on it. Very much a modern look. And for Richard, there was a blending, including an initial costume of black doublet, black jeans, and black cowboy boots. But this was replaced variously with white pleated shirt, black jeans, and gold boots; with a green feathered doublet and sculpted chest piece (which may have been sculpted in such a way as to suggest Richard’s scoliosis); or with an almost entirely gold royal ensemble.

Speaking of Richard’s scoliosis, this has been one of the controversies surrounding this play—that Terry is not a disabled actor, but was cast in the role of Richard, which is one of the most famous disabled characters in all of theatre. I’m not going to delve too deep into this controversy, though here are some links to articles about it:

One point of potential controversy that did strike me, however, was the choice of who was cast as Richmond. Crerar is a great actor and there was nothing inherently problematic about his performance as Richmond—on the contrary, he was quite good, as he was in his other role as Catesby. However, he is the only cast member who presents as male (though Crerar uses both male and gender neutral pronouns). Everyone else in the cast presents as female, and so one might be forgiven for reading the casting choice as reflecting the toppling of the tyrannical female (playing at being male) by the male as being some kind of implicit endorsement of cis-het patriarchy. I doubt that was an intended element of the play, but the triumphant defeat of a female Richard by a male Richmond could be read as signaling support for traditional gender hierarchies. And the glorious defeat of the female coded body “pretending” to be male, even using prosthetics (i.e., Terry’s chest plate) to appear more male may, without too much stretching, be read as the destruction of a transman by a “real” man. Again, I don’t think the production team purposefully sought out these thematics, but I do find troubling the choice of casting the single male-presenting member of the cast as Richard.

Video review of Shakespeare’s Richard III by Andi Stout and I

Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin—14 June 2023

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The big draw of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League’s production of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, by Aaron Sorkin, was undoubtedly Richard Thomas in the role of Atticus Finch. Thomas, famous as John-Boy in The Waltons, was certainly a big factor in my mother’s excitement to see the production—and considering that many of the other people in the audience were older, I imagine that most of them had grown up with the Waltons as well. However, a celebrity lead was far from the only worthwhile element of this show.

The play itself is obviously an adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, which is one of the most widely read and influential pieces of American literature. This can make adapting a piece like this challenging, because audiences are likely to be primed by knowing the story and may expect it to be treated in certain ways. Sorkin treated the novel extremely effectively by, on the one hand, maintaining all of the crucial elements of the plot itself, while, on the other, not merely putting the relatively linear plot of the book on stage. Tom Robinson’s trial is broken up throughout the play, being narrated and contextualized by Scout, Jem, and Dill. This non-linear structure works well for creating tension around the movement of the play while at the same time giving audiences the elements of the story that make Lee’s novel such an impactful story.

While Thomas was the main attraction—and his performance was without question extremely good, as were all the performers—the show was stolen by Jacqueline Williams, playing Culpernia, the Finch’s maid/nanny to the kids/friend of Atticus. This is a supporting role, but every time Williams spoke she got a consistent audible response from the audience. Throughout the show, the audience regularly responded with laughter, gasps, or other verbal responses. But Williams was most consistently able to draw out audience reactions with her sassy Black maid character, speaking truth to white men in the racist south. Another performer who consistently got these kinds of audience responses was Steven Lee Johnson, playing Dill Harris. He perfectly combined a kindly insight with a charming naivete that made his performance deeply endearing. Again, every actor was impressive, but Williams and Johnson took their supporting characters and went above and beyond with them.

My one issue with the production is with the dialects. Personally, I don’t like fake accents on stage. I think they’re often done poorly. And while there were elements of the dialects here that were very good, there were also lines that didn’t strike my ear as correct for an Alabama accent. Part of the challenge is for an actor to project their voice while doing an accent, which is much harder than speaking at a normal conversational volume, but I am just overall not a fan of stage accents. One thing I definitely want to give the dialect coach credit for is Joey Collins’ (playing Bob Ewell) pronunciation of the word “white,” which he distinctly pronounced “hwite,” with an audible haich sound at the beginning. This is a pronunciation that was cultivated by white southerners after the Civil War, which was meant to mark them as true southerners and true white people. So, when the racist Klan member Bob Ewell pronounces a strong haich sound at the beginning of the word, this is spot on in terms of the dialect of the time and place.

My video review of Aaron Sorokin’s Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird

The Women of Trachis: New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, by Theater of War Productions—27 July 2022

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Theater of War Productions is one of the most exciting companies in the performance of ancient Greek and Shakespearean plays because they tie each performance to a particular social issue and use the performances as a jumping off point for discussions of the issue. Their recent version of Sophocles’ The Women of Trachis was performed with the support of the New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, and featured nurses as the Chorus and in two of the main roles. The connections between the performance, the audience members who responded, and the play itself is one of the elements that makes a Theater of War performance so sensational.

Sophocles’ Women of Trachis takes place at the end of Heracles’ life. He has been off fighting, and he sends word back to his wife Deianeira and his son Hyllas that the battle is won and he’s coming home. He also sends back Iole, his war bride/concubine/sex slave. This does not sit entirely well with Deianeira, who decides to try and win back Heracles’ affection with a love potion given to her by the centaur Nessus, who made the potion from his blood while dying because of Heracles. Perhaps predictably, Nessus tricked Deianeira, giving her a horrible poison rather than a love potion, but she did not begin to suspect that until she had already sent the robe soaked in the fatal draught. Deianeira expresses her fears to the Chorus, and shortly afterwards her son Hyllas arrives accusing her of murdering Heracles. Rather than defending herself, Deianeira accepts her guilt and commits suicide. Hyllas realizes his mistake and takes back his condemnation of his mother. Heracles is then brought on for an extended scene where he complains of the agony he’s experiencing, condemns Deianeira and expresses the wish to brutally murder her, recounts his great deeds, and then essentially uses emotional blackmail to convince his son to build a funeral pyre and set him on fire and then to marry Iole.

The Theater of War performance, done over Zoom, included the portion of Sophocles’ play in which Deianeira (Elizabeth Marvel) begins to fear she may have accidentally poisoned her husband, Hyllas’ (Craig Manbauman) condemnation then repentance, and Heracles’ (David Denman) experience of his painful demise. This show cut the first portion of the play in order to focus more specifically on the section relating to Heracles’ death, which is much more relevant and connected to the experience of hospice and palliative care nurses with whom the company collaborated for this project. The experiences of Deianeira’s grief and guilt, Hyllas’ difficulty processing Heracles’ suffering, and Heracles’ anger, pain, and trauma all resonated with the lived experiences of these nurses—points they made eloquently in the discussion after the reading of the script itself.

The three members of the Chorus (Angie Meraviglia, Dawn Fort, and Sharon A. Campbell) are all nurses, as is Manbauman and Charlaine Lasse, who played the Nurse. For me, the strongest performance of the night was actually Lasse. In her post-show comments, she said that as a post-natal care and NICU nurse—dealing with newly born babies who need immediate medical attention, often intensive care—she has to balance between loving her patients, but not being in love with them. That tension between being devoted to helping them, but not being so devoted that when patients do inevitably die she is unable to cope. Lasse was able to bring this tension to the Nurse’s role, which is essentially that of a messenger in this portion of the play, reporting Deianeira’s suicide to the Chorus. Her performance was natural and her reading of the lines crisp and clean, giving the impression not of saying lines written millennia ago, but of speaking from the heart as someone who has lived this experience of loss.

The other really strong performance was by Manbauman, who did a masterful job shifting through Hyllas’ competing emotions within the play. Manbauman was able to effectly portray the anger of a son who feels betrayed when he thinks he mother murdered his father, then the remorse of a son who knows he has helped drive his mother to suicide, then the tensions between his own desire to do what’s right and his (emotionally abusive) father’s demands of him.

Denman’s Heracles was probably the weakest of the performances, in large part because the role doesn’t lend itself to be played on Zoom. The performance was over-the-top, with a lot of roaring, excessive facial expressions, and an intensity that didn’t translate well over Zoom.

Again, though, what makes Theater of War Productions truly a unique company is that their performances are the catalyst for discussions among people immediately impacted by the issues raised by the plays. Following the performance itself, the floor was opened to the nurse-performers to discuss what resonated with them in the play, or what struck them as most important. Then the floor opened up to comments from the audience. And it is this approach to active engagement that defines Theater of War. They try not just to present the ancient plays, or even just to make them relevant to modern audiences, but to create spaces of discussion—a kind of Athenian democracy inspired approach—in which members of a community come together to collectively make meaning of these plays.

My video review of Theatre of War Productions’ Women of Trachis

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, by Moises Kaufman-2 May 2021

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There are few subjects more fit for the stage than Oscar Wilde. He was a larger than life personality, who fundamentally changed the way many think about art, about society, and about sexuality. And of course he was best known in his lifetime as a playwright, so the stage is doubly appropriate. Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency was performed on Zoom by the University of Idaho Theatre Department under the direction of Ricky Kimball, and the production was excellent.

Gross Indecency utilizes Kaufman’s frequent approach to documentary theatre, where the script is composed of primary sources woven together to create a distinct impression of the subject. The play primarily draws from transcripts of Wilde’s three trials in 1895, along with memoirs from key participants (especially Lord Alfred Douglas), contemporary news accounts of the trials, reviews of Wilde’s works, and Wilde’s own writing. The first of the three trials was a libel suit Wilde brought against the Marquis of Queensbury for leaving a card at Wilde’s club inscribed, “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite [sic].” Queensbury was the father of Wilde’s lover Douglas, and Douglas pushed Wilde to pursue a libel suit to preserve his reputation. The problem was that Wilde couldn’t prove he had not committed sodomy—especially when the defense began bringing in witnesses who would swear they had sex with Wilde. So, Wilde’s lawyer, Sir Edward Clarke, recommended dropping the suit and tried to convince the judge that Wilde assented only to the term posing in Queensbury’s note, not to the actual charge of sodomy. But Wilde was quickly arrested and stood trial for gross indecency. The arrest was catastrophic for Wilde, as his plays were cancelled and all of his creditors called in their debts simultaneously. However, at the first gross indecency trial, the jury was unable to reach a verdict, and so a second trial was launched—specifically with the intention of convicting Wilde no matter what, in many people’s opinions. Wilde defended himself, but his unwillingness to acknowledge conventional Victorian condemnation of homosexual acts and generally repressive Victorian morality worked against him (as did the fact that he was almost certainly guilty). At the end of the second trial, Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years hard labor, which almost certainly played a major role in his death just a few years after leaving prison.

With any play written for the stage, there are practical difficulties in converting it for a Zoom presentation, but Gross Indecency does seem to lend itself particularly well to a digital format—though there were some awkward closed captioning lines, my favorite being one to the effect of “Oscar Wilde is an author and sex.” Because the play is largely driven by readings of transcripts and other documents, it doesn’t require as much direct interaction as many other plays, and so the Zoom performance under Kimball’s direction worked really naturally.

The performances across the board were strong, with the cast universally conveying the complexity of characters caught in legal and ethical systems that often extorted or demanded conformity. The two most complex characters are Oscar Wilde, played by Luke Holt, and Lord Alfred Douglas, played by Angel Kalasz. In the post-show talkback, both Holt and Kalasz talked about creating their characters. Holt focused on the larger than life aspect of Wilde, drawing inspiration from his excesses. But the performance was not driven by excess, there was nothing over-the-top or stagy about Holt’s performance, especially in the latter portion of the play as Wilde falls into a deep depression facing the inevitable guilty verdict. For Kalasz, the process involved finding a way to sympathize with Douglas, who, in many senses, is not an admirable figure (he was a Nazi sympathizer in later life, so there’s that). Douglas at times seems devoted to Wilde and he expresses a progressive desire for homosexuality to be seen as legitimate. However, many of his actions and statements, especially pushing Wilde into the initial libel suit, lead effectively to Wilde’s downfall. Kalasz did an amazing job performing these complexities, at times looking almost smarmy and at times clearly mourning his beloved Oscar.

One of the big challenges for much of the rest of the cast—as it is in others of Kaufman’s plays, like The Laramie Project—is the vast number of parts they need to play to enact members of the court, Wilde’s friends, witnesses, etc. This was done admirably through a series of costume changes to mark different people, as well as by giving each character their own distinct personality. The only aspects of the costumes and characters I could have done without was some of the fake beards, muttonchops, and moustaches—like those on Queensbury (Nick Hansen) and Bernard Shaw (Blake Presnell)—and some of the English or Irish accents made it slightly difficult to understand the lines over computer microphones. Though, to be fair, I’m not generally a fan of actors doing fake accents anyway, unless they’re exceptionally well done.

My video review of Moise Kaufman’s Gross Indecency

Antigone in Ferguson, by Theater of War Productions–9 Aug. 2020

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Theater of War’s Antigone in Ferguson adapts the Sophocles play in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and its specific history in Ferguson, MO following the murder of Michael Brown by police in 2014. Organized and run by members of the Ferguson community working with professional actors and singers from New York and Los Angeles, the show is a powerful re-situating of a Classical drama for contemporary political purposes.

Antigone in Ferguson is a staged reading of Sophocles’ play, translated by Theater of War’s Bryan Doerries, with a major emphasis on the chorus. The chorus combines BLM activists from Ferguson with professional singers from New York, with music composed by Dr. Philip Woodmore. The music is reminiscent of a gospel choir, with a complex blend of choral harmonies and soloists who create emphasis. The soloists—John Legette, Gheremi Clay, De-Rance Blaylock, Marcelle Davies Lashley, and Duane Foster—brought a massive amount of vocal talent to the production, lifting the songs to the heavens. Some of the songs, like the closing one in the performance I saw through Zoom draw directly from the gospel traditions, while others had clear jazz influences. It was also a treat to see Dr. Woodmore conducting on Zoom, because he brought an amazing energy to conducting his music.

The individual performances were strong as well, which is especially impressive for a dramatic reading over Zoom—media that eliminate much of the ability to play off of other performers and to use stage space to create meaning, which are key elements of acting on stage. Creon (Oscar Issac) was probably the most evocative performance, playing the role like a mafia don by turns menacing and mercurial. Antigone (Tracie Thoms) embodied the character’s righteous rage against Creon, against patriarchy, and against the city she accuses of abandoning her. Tiresias gave a really interesting performance, wearing dark glasses reminiscent of Stevie Wonder, but inflecting his prophecies like a revival preacher. He effectively emphasized crucial words by drawing the syllables out and then cutting them off abruptly. And, although he is a supporting character, the Guard/Messenger (Jumaane Williams) actually gave a great performance. When he reported Haemon and Antigone’s deaths, his speech was powerful and full of foreboding.

Probably the most powerful aspect of the performance, however, was the emphasis on community and the drive to build a better world. This was demonstrated through the very fact that the chorus was made up of Ferguson residents, many of whom had been active in the BLM protests after Michael Brown’s murder. But this commitment to community was also established by the framing of the performance, with opening remarks given by Cori Bush, who recently won the Democratic primary for Missouri’s 1st House district. Bush was active in BLM after Brown’s murder, and she represents a powerful progressive voice for equality and compassion. Having Bush speak before the performance is actually a great Classical reference, because in ancient Greece a politician would traditionally make opening remarks before plays were performed at the City Dionysia. The other framing element was a post-show discussion where community members who have lost loved ones to police violence responded to the performance, and then the floor was opened for discussion from general audience members. This kind of community engagement aligns with Theater of War’s ethos and dedication of building a better world through collective engagement, dialogue, active listening, and empathy.

My video review of Theatre of War Productions’ Antigone In Ferguson

The Persians, by Aeschylus, 25 July 2020

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Aeschylus’ The Persians is one of the oldest and most interesting plays in Western history, being unique among surviving ancient Athenian plays in being set entirely outside the Greek speaking world, and in unique among tragedies in being about current events rather than a mythological subject. The play premiered in 472 BCE, just eight years after the battle of Salamis that prompts the action. I’ve read the play several times, but getting to see it produced live from the theatre at Epidaurus by the National Theatre of Greece was a once in a lifetime experience (though I wish they would put up a video version so I could re-watch the performance, and perhaps teach from it).

The Persians is set in the city of Susa, capital of the Persian empire, in 480 BCE. King Xerxes has taken a massive army and navy, with most of the young men of the empire, to invade Athens. The chorus of aging Persian nobles worries about the progress of the campaign, and when Atossa—the queen mother and widow of the previous king Darius the Great—enters and tells them her prophetic dreams, it strengthens the air of foreboding. Shortly, a messenger arrives with news of the destruction of the army and navy. He lists all the nobles/generals who have died, then tells how the Greeks lured the numerically superior Persian navy into a trap and destroyed the entire armada. Atossa and the chorus are stunned and dismayed, and they summon the spirit of Darius from the underworld to advise them and explain how such catastrophe could have come about. He tells them that the gods were angered by Xerxes’ hubris in building a bridge to obstruct the Hellespont, and so they have doomed his campaign. After Darius returns to the dead, Xerxes himself arrives and he and the chorus lament the tragedy. Xerxes blames himself for the defeat, and repeatedly wishes the gods had killed him along with his soldiers.

1024px-The_great_theater_of_Epidaurus,_designed_by_Polykleitos_the_Younger_in_the_4th_century_BC,_Sanctuary_of_Asklepeios_at_Epidaurus,_Greece_(14015010416)
The ancient theatre at Epidaurus, By Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany – The great theater of Epidaurus, designed by Polykleitos the Younger in the 4th century BC, Sanctuary of Asklepeios at Epidaurus, Greece, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37881743

The National Theatre of Greece performed the play as their first ever livestream from the ancient theatre at Epidaurus, one of the few surviving ancient theatres from Greece. Directed by Dimitris Lignadis, it was an incredible show. One of the most striking things about the show was the complex blend of classical declamation and frenetic activity. Atossa and Darius in particular performed largely in a traditional, almost archaic style where they would face toward the audience and speak their lines—even dialogue directed at another character—toward the auditorium (or the theatron as it was known in ancient Greek theatres).

Generally, this performance style has lost popularity in favor of more naturalistic performance styles, and I usually find it stilted and wooden. However, in this production, there were brilliant hints where this highly stylized approach broke down, indicating a complexity behind the performance choice. The best instance of this is when Atossa and the spirit of Darius are speaking to one another, and she is seeking his guidance. The actors stood on either side of the entrance through the center back of the set, speaking to one another but facing the audience and declaiming their lines. But at one point, Atossa turns and takes a step toward the ghost of her beloved husband, and he holds up one hand to stop her. It was such a simple gesture, but in her turning toward him we saw the breakdown of the queenly faced and a revelation that she is a human being who wants the comfort of her beloved partner. And in his gesture stopping her, we see the reminder that he is dead, and they cannot comfort one another.

This declamatory style was counterbalanced by wild, passionate performances that raised the adrenaline and infected the audience with the actors’ emotions. The first instance of a really high energy passion was when the messenger—who I thought gave one of the most impressive performance of the night—recounted the battle of Salamis. At one point, he repeats the war cry of the Greek army before they attacked the Persians, a war cry exhorting the Greeks to fight for their homes, their families, their gods, and their liberty. In delivering this speech, the messenger picked up one of the long staffs the chorus used extensively in their choreography, and he brandished it like a Greek spear, screaming the war cry at the top of his lungs.

The visceral performance clearly inspired the (mostly) Greek live audience who began applauding the speech part way through. They also applauded earlier in the play when the chorus reluctantly answers Atossa’s question about who rules Greece. The chorus tells her that the Greeks are slaves to no one, and the audience burst into applause. That was one of the fascinating things about seeing the play streamed live from Greece, was hearing those occasional audience reactions. Obviously for democratic 5th century BCE Athens and for an audience that would have included many veterans of Salamis, Aeschylus’ patriotic gestures—Athenians as slaves to no one, the stirring battle cry urging Greeks to protect what they hold most dear—would not have gone unappreciated. This would have hit emotional chords with the original audience. And while we can consciously be aware that these lines may stir Greek pride even to today, it’s a different experience to hear an audience react with the same kind of pride and patriotism that their ancestors would have felt watching the play almost  2,500 years ago.

My video review of Aeschylus’ The Persians

Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare–2 Nov. 2019

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Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is, perhaps surprisingly for people who don’t know the play, not really about Caesar, it’s about Brutus and his struggle with the decision to be drawn into the conspiracy to murder the increasingly imperial Caesar in the hopes of restoring a free Roman Republic. And then once the murder is committed, he must stand by his decision and defend it, not only ethically, but on the field of battle. The Juniata College production, directed by Cosimo Sciortino, was a somewhat classical, but not necessarily inspiring, rendition of the play.

Julius Caesar begins with a parade in honor of Caesar who has become the most popular man in Rome, and who many Senators fear will try to become a king. Cassius, one of Rome’s leading men, draws Brutus aside and tells him of a plot to free Rome from Caesar’s dominance. Brutus is torn between his great friendship for Caesar and his dedication to the ideal of Roman freedom, but finally he agrees to join the conspiracy. As the plot comes together, Brutus repeatedly insists that only Caesar can be killed (not his friend Mark Antony) and that the killers must immediately proclaim their motives publicly. The appointed day arrives and a group of Senators kill Caesar. Mark Antony arrives and gets permission to speak at his friend’s funeral, on the condition that he doesn’t condemn the murderers. Brutus gives a funeral speech about liberty, then Antony gives a speech pointing to the many virtues of the slain man and implying—though carefully never stating outright—that the conspirators were fiendishly wrong. A civil war breaks out pitting Antony and Octavius against Brutus and Cassius, with Antony and Octavius in the ascent. Finally, there is a climactic battle, where the tide turns back and forth until Cassius, having heard (incorrectly) of his friend’s death, commits suicide. As the battle turns against his forces, Brutus finally kills himself as well, and when Antony and Octavius find his body they acknowledge his nobility and honor.

One of the big problems with Caesar from a performance perspective is that it’s so rhetorical. There are so many speeches that, while they’re well crafted according to the Classical principles of rhetoric, they lend themselves to simple recitation/declamation rather than the more naturalistic acting that contemporary audiences tend to expect. And I think much of the Juniata performance fell into this trap. While the actors knew the words, their intonation, inflection, and emoting often didn’t show that they understood the emotional timbre of the words they spoke. Will Shearer (Cassius) and Ashley Purvis (Casca) especially had this problem. Shearer did a fine job emoting when Cassius blames Brutus (Ben Josefson) for not trusting him, but throughout the opening portion it wasn’t clear what style Cassius was supposed to have. Was he a cunning manipulator, a concerned citizen driven to desperate measures, a sinister assassin? As Shearer was recruiting Josefson into the conspiracy, he was largely just flat. In some sense, this was a classical performance, as the lack of clear emotional display put the words front and center—which was very Elizabethan, as Shakespeare’s original audiences would have expected to follow the storyline verbally much more than through naturalistic action. Again, however, modern audiences don’t typically find this approach to performance engaging, and the play did seem to drag.

There were some bright spots, however. Mark Antony’s (Veta Piscitella) funerary speech praising—or, rather, burying him—Caesar was high energy and impassioned. But the standout for me was Josefson’s Brutus. He was not high energy, but the subtlety of the performance did an excellent job conveying the moral dilemma at the heart of Brutus’ internal conflict. Josefson was especially strong when performing alone, like in the soliloquies alone in his house the night before the assassination, or shortly before the final battle. These musings gave a great psychological depth to the character through the performance.

Julius Caesar Set
Set of Julius Caesar at Juniata College.

The other noteworthy thing is that the Juniata performance was in the round, which is always a challenging performance style because the actors need to try and divide their attention between the multiple sides of the space. Much of the action was actually performed around the outside of the stage proper (see the image above), which meant that it was occurring farther away from at least one group of audience members—a logistical problem. Thematically it made sense to have much of the conspiratorial discussion occur around the outside of the main area, but it sometimes made seeing the performers a challenge.

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt–8 Aug. 2019

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*For full disclosure, I worked as dramaturg for this production*

Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons is a complex, philosophical play grounded in history, theology, philosophy, ethics, and existentialism. But it’s one of the best plays of the 20th century. Bolt’s play is dynamic and challenging, raising issues that are not only relevant for 1960 (when the show premiered) but remain important today. The Nittany Theatre at the Barn production, directed by Mike Knarr, did an excellent job navigating the challenging philosophical waters and bringing this historically grounded play to life for 2019.

The plot of A Man for All Seasons follows Sir Thomas More, who rose to prominence as one of early modern England’s most brilliant thinkers and statesmen, known for his scrupulous honesty. However, when Henry VIII seeks a divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, More refuses to swear to the Act of Supremacy making Henry head of the Church in England. Although More makes no public statement, people on each side of the debate—Henry and Thomas Cromwell, his sadistic Secretary of the Council, in support of the new Church, and Chapyus, the Spanish ambassador, supporting Rome—believe they know More’s opinion of the matter. And so, it becomes impossible for Henry’s Church to be legitimate without More openly declaring allegiance or being found guilty of treason. Cromwell conducts a campaign against More, who uses his strict silence as an absolute defense against the charge of treason, until a young official desperate to make his fortune perjures himself by testifying that More denied the supremacy. Alongside this political plotline there is a personal element, because many scenes present More with his family, emphasizing first his devotion to his wife and daughter and then later their suffering in his absence.

The Nittany Theatre production had a number of excellent performances. Obviously, the most central role is Thomas More himself, and Ben Whitesell did a great job showing both the serene confidence and the deep emotional anguish of More when called upon. For instance, Whitesell brought this emotion to Act 2 Scene 7, when the imprisoned More is briefly allowed to see his family. Thomas argues with his wife, Alice (Laura Ann “Dellie” Saxe) because she doesn’t understand why he cannot give in. Both Whitesell and Saxe played the scene fantastically—he desperate for her understanding as confirmation that he’s doing the right thing, and she the pragmatist who wants her husband back alive, rather than valuing a moral stand.

Some of the other standout performances were by Stephanie Whitesell as The Common Man, Mercer Bristow as the aged and wheezing Cardinal Wolsey, Michael Russell as the sadistic Thomas Cromwell, and Dave Saxe as Henry VIII.

A Man for All Seasons Set
The set for A Man for All Seasons

Probably the most problematic element for me was the lighting. The production used a very deep stage with two different portions—a raised upstage area and a ground level downstage orchestra type space. As the characters moved dynamically back and forth between these areas, the lighting often went up or down on a particular portion based on whether there were actors there, but in some scenes (especially night scenes) the lighting didn’t quite hit all portions of the stage. So, for instance, in the first scene, at Sir Thomas More’s house, Stephanie Whitesell—at this point in The Common Man’s guise as More’s servant Matthew—delivered some of her lines from an ill-lit upstage, while the main action of the scene was going on in the better lit downstage orchestra.

The Duchess (of Malfi), by Zinnie Harris–28 May 2019

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The Duchess of Malfi was originally a Jacobean play by John Webster—one of the best early modern plays, in my opinion. But what Zinnie Harris has done with her new version is amazing. She has kept the dark, violent, misogynistic themes of the original, but updated it to feel fresh, contemporary, and even (perhaps surprisingly) empowering. The performance at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, directed by Harris, was a fantastic example of making an old text relevant to the contemporary world, without sacrificing either Webster or Harris as distinct voices and perspectives.

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The set from the Royal Lyceum production of The Duchess.

Harris largely maintained the basic storyline from Webster’s version. The play begins with the widowed Duchess of Malfi ignoring her brothers’ advice and deciding to marry her steward Antonio in secret. The brothers—Ferdinand and the Cardinal—put their cynical henchman Bosola into the Duchess’ house as a spy to find out if she is entertaining any potential suitors, and when Bosola determines that she’s pregnant, Ferdinand loses his mind. He imprisons his sister and psychologically tortures her, including making her believe that Antonio and her son have been killed. Finally, on Ferdinand’s orders, Bosola murders the Duchess, but he is so touched by her purity and selflessness even at the point of death that he foregoes his cynical allegiance to the brothers and vows revenge. Antonio and Bosola agree to kill the Cardinal and Ferdinand, but during the assassination attempt, Antonio is accidentally killed and Bosola is grievously wounded.

Many of the changes Harris has made are cosmetic, though they effectively modernize the play. For instance, in Webster’s version Ferdinand shows the Duchess waxworks figures which he tells her are the corpses of Antonio and their son. But (as Harris said during the postshow talkback), that wouldn’t really work for modern audiences, so the substituted video projections of her family being shot. By projecting this image across the entire back wall, the show put the audience in the uncomfortable position of being shown the images used to torture the Duchess—we, in a sense, became the tortured. Similarly, Harris expands more on some of the minor characters, principally Julia and Delio, who are relatively minor characters in Webster’s version. Harris gives them each complex emotions and develops them as individuals, including Julia’s ambivalent relationship with the Cardinal, who is both her lover and her rapist.

One of the most significant and moving changes is that after their murders, the Duchess, her daughter, and her servant Cariola don’t leave the stage, but remain as ghostly presences haunting the living. This is a great embodiment of what is, in Webster, merely thematic. The Duchess, in particular continues to interact with people, largely on the level of whispering to them—like when she repeatedly disturbs the Cardinal by whispering “Murder.” Having these murdered characters on stage also provides a great way of staging the scene where Antonio has a significant conversation with an echo, with the specific words it repeats convincing him that the Duchess has been murdered. The echoes are performed by the Duchess, Cariola. The choice to keep these women on stage also helped produce the strange hopefulness of the end of the play—despite male violence and the attempts to limit the Duchess’ choice and sexual freedom, she continued to assert her power, even after death.

The premier run at the Royal Lyceum was fantastically performed, with excellent acting from everyone. Kirsty Stuart was a fantastic Duchess, vivacious and self-confident in the first portion, then stridently defiant as she tried to maintain her composure and dignity in prison. Ferdinand was played by Angus Miller, who did an excellent job portraying the incestuous obsession of Ferdinand for his sister, and the dark menacing insanity that eventually leads him to lose control entirely.

Adam Best’s Bosola was an interesting, dynamic portrayal, highlighting the complexity of the character. Bosola is a kind of chameleon, able to change his skin to blend with his surroundings. In his first appearance, Best’s Bosola was a shuffling, downtrodden mess, but as he became established in the Duchess’ household his entire demeanor changed, becoming more refined and standing straighter. However, Harris’ Bosola is somewhat less complex than Webster’s, which is one of the few issues I have with Harris’ version—though that probably reflects more that I find Webster’s Bosola one of the most interesting characters in all of drama. Harris has kept the misogynist diatribe against women wearing make up, and Bosola’s philosophy about loyalty. But one of his most important attributes in the Webster is that he follows the Cardinal and Ferdinand out of a cynical belief that all the world is corrupt, and therefore he must equally be corrupt to succeed. This is the belief that is shaken by the Duchess’ willingness to sacrifice her life with dignity, and for me it is a fundamental element of what makes Bosola so fascinating. But Harris has cut his early speech establishing the cynical philosophy that will motivate him throughout the first roughly 2/3 of the play. However, Best’s performance ensured that Bosola was still an amazingly complex character, particularly through his interactions with Cariola (Fletcher Mathers), who challenged his misogyny, his philosophy, and his whole outlook.

Antigone, by Sophocles–1 Mar. 2018

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When going to see a theatre production at a college theatre you’ve never been to before, you never know what you’re going to get. College theatre is of notoriously varied quality. Which is why I was so pleased with Juniata College’s production of Antigone, directed by Leigh Hendrix. While there were some performance limitations, the show took a lot of interesting risks and made unique interpretive choices that made for an engaging and thought-provoking performance.

Sophocles’ Antigone is one of the ancient Greek playwright’s best known works, and it has been subject to intensive philosophical debate over the years. The play tells of the clash between Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, and Kreon, who has inherited the throne of Thebes after the civil war in which Eteokles and Polyneikes killed one another— they were Antigone’s brothers, who were supposed to alternate ruling Thebes until Eteokles decided to exile his brother and keep the throne for himself. Kreon declares that Eteokles should receive a hero’s burial while Polyneikes should remain unburied, and that anyone who performed any funeral rites for him would be executed. After her sister Ismene refuses to help, Antigone goes and buries her brother’s body. She is arrested, and after arguing with Kreon over the gap between divine law and the law of the city-state, is sentenced to be walled in a cave. Kreon’s son Haemon argues for mercy, but his father ignores him, and as the guilt mounts against Kreon for his inflexibility the play ends with Antigone dead, as well as Haemon and Kreon’s wife Eurydike.

One interesting choice at the Juniata production was an all-female cast. The majority of roles in Antigone are male roles, and one of the ways the play has often been read (including by Jacques Lacan) is as a feminist struggle between Kreon representing the masculine power of the state on the one hand, and Antigone representing pre-political feminine kinship networks on the other. In casting Christine Reilly to play Kreon, Anna Sismour to play the guard, and a chorus consisting of four female actors, the Juniata production replaced the masculine authorities of the king, the military, and the chorus of elderly Theban men with female performers. The all-female cast is particularly interesting in light of Judith Butler’s argument in Antigone’s Claim, where she theorizes that Antigone represents not the feminine antithesis of Kreon, but a queer deformation of both Kreon’s (masculine) position as head of the state, and a deformation of the pre-political family because of her almost incestuous focus on her brother’s body (as well as being the offspring of Oedipus). When the entire cast is female, this queer challenge to social power structures is doubly reflected back, as Kreon’s masculine authority becomes a performance increasingly divorced from Reilly’s physical body.

There were also a lot of interesting individual performance choices. Beginning with the titular character, Antigone (Samekh McKiever) was much more afraid than I typically picture the character. McKiever took Antigone in a different direction than I have imagined the heroine, because after her arrest McKiever repeatedly drew back from Kreon, tried to escape, and sought help/sympathy from the elderly chorus. I picture Antigone as a character who seeks her own death, a lady who doth protest too much that she wants to live. But McKiever’s performance was of an Antigone who wants to live, and whose fine speeches about accepting death seemed as much an attempt to convince herself as anyone else. The performance challenged my take on the character in a way I found refreshing and engaging.

On the other hand, I didn’t care for Shamya Butler-Bonner’s portrayal of Ismene (who is one of my favorite characters, disproportionate to her relative role in the play). To be clear, there was nothing wrong with Butler-Bonner’s acting, or even with the interpretive choice. But the anger she brought to the character is totally foreign to the way that I see Ismene. In her interactions with McKiever early in the play, Butler-Bonner’s energy was much higher than McKiever’s, and her tone was more outraged. For me, Antigone is the sister whose anger burns from the inside out, whereas Ismene has, in my mind, the survivor’s drive to live quietly and unobtrusively to avoid further destruction.

The other major performer who made a big impression was Reilly, playing Kreon. Kreon is, for much of the show, a tough character to make work because he spends the bulk of the time as a kind of swaggering tin-pot dictator making edicts and demanding he have his own way. And Reilly wasn’t always fantastic in that element, but where she really delivered a powerful performance was at the play’s end, when she brought in the lifeless body of Haemon (Rina Kirsch), and the body of Eurydike (Corey Atkinson) is brought out of the palace. In that grief and despair, Reilly really shone. With bloody hands, and on her knees between the bodies of her family members, Reilly wailed the grief of a king brought from the height of power to complete despair.

Apart from the performances, the set, designed by Apollo Weaver, added a unique and innovative component to the performance. The back wall was a Greek façade with columns and double doors, then a performance space echoing ancient Greek theatres—with a raised platform up stage and a semi-circular orkhestra downstage—but what was intriguing was the ring of dirt around the orkhestra, which can just be seem in the photo above. Most of the ring of dirt was dry, but the section at the center of the stage, where the stairs down from the orkhestra to the ground were, was mud. And as characters walked through that mud, it was tracked progressively onto the stage. So as the play went on, the stage became dirtier and dirtier, turning the white marble(-looking) set brown. Then at the end of the play, when Kreon brings on Haemon’s body, the mud that has been accumulating the entire show is mixed with blood. A symbol of the sad and squalid condition that Kreon’s hubris has brought to Thebes.