Tag: shakespeare

…pardon me, I do not mean to read…–JULIUS CAESAR, III ii

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And pardon me while I get more specific than is ever necessary.

I offer two solid reasons to witness and not to read Shakespeare. Which is to say, obviously read Shakespeare, but not silently, and if possible not alone. Three measly lines from two consecutive scenes in Macbeth.

1) It’s not the most important moment in the play by any means, but the Doctor and the Gentlewoman in Macbeth, V i, have this exchange while they witness the sleepwalking Lady M doing her thing and nattering on about dead women and manual hygiene:

          DR: Go to, go to, you have known what you should not.

          GW: She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she hath known.

I’ve seen and done this scene repeatedly. And there are options about the basic meaning of it the script doesn’t really help with – no stage directions here, and most of the scene is in prose, so even the rhythmic clues are more up in the air. (You could argue that the Doctor’s line is in verse, but you could also argue it ain’t.)

So, options. You’ve got:

          DR: [to the sleepwalking Lady M, whom he knows can’t hear him but has just maybe revealed herself as at least accessory to murder] Go to, go to, you have known what you should not.

          GW: She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she hath known.

That choice is difficult even to paraphrase in brief – hitting the verbs seems to do all the work – and is therefore the one I like most. But you’ve also got:

          DR: [to the Gentlewoman, who has just heard Lady M maybe reveal herself as at least accessory to murder] Go to, go to, you have known what you should not.

          GW: She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she hath known. [I.e., “Don’t blame me for hearing it; plus if anyone here has known what she should not…”]

OR, maybe:

          DR: [to himself, having heard Lady M maybe reveal herself as at least accessory to murder] Go to, go to, you have known what you should not.

          GW: She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she hath known. [I.e., “Don’t beat yourself up, fellow non-royal. These people are clearly a mess.”]

I’m sure there are others, but I imagine they fall under these three umbrellas.

Buried in all this is how much I love the juxtaposition of the plain-spoken Gentlewoman and the Doctor, who starts out trying to sound impressive in jargony prose (“In this slumbery agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say?”) but eventually is beaten by horror into verse that’s clear, terrified, and caring:

          More needs she the divine than the physician.

          God, God forgive us all! Look after her;

          Remove from her the means of all annoyance,

          And still keep eyes upon her. So, good night:

          My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight.

          I think, but dare not speak.

A thoughtful dynamic for two characters we’ve never seen before and who frankly we don’t need but would miss if they were gone. But back to the topic at hand.

 

2) This one is a tad more famous, relatively. In the scene before the sleepwalking, Macduff (IV iii) is told (400-year-od spoiler) that Macbeth has killed the entire Macduff household. Among his responses is the great line, “He has no children.”

The hell does that mean? “He”? “He” Malcolm, who just told Macduff to chill, and obviously couldn’t say such a thing if he had children? “He” Macbeth, who couldn’t imagine murdering children if he had any of his own? “He” Macbeth again, who (even though Macduff wouldn’t really linger too long on thoughts of such an act) prevents proper and equal revenge by not having any family for Macduff himself to kill? “He” Macduff himself, who suddenly has to try on the giant robes of widowerhood and hears in his head how pitying people will be describing him now? All of those? Some? One?

No help from the script at all, Silent Reader. An actor will pick one; a Reader Aloud can toy with options. All of them can work. But there’s work to be done.

Man, I love this stuff.

…what stern ungentle hands/ Hath lopp’d and hew’d… – TITUS ANDRONICUS, II iv

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Yes, yes, last night was the first audience for Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Macbeth, but next week Kentucky Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus will also open, for which I did the dramaturgical leg work, which is to say providing text coaching for the cast and butchering the script down to a honey-baked ninety minutes. I’ve asked myself fairly often in the last couple of months whether referring to my cutting work on this particular play as “butchering” or any of the other gruesome jokes the story inspires will ever cease to amuse me and the answer thus far seems to be a resounding “No; no, it won’t.”

I teeter between being a let’s-do-the-whole-thing-uncut-at-proper-speed-in-tights-won’t-it-be-glorious purist and an if-Orson-could-put-it-in-a-blender-so-can-I scissorhanded madman. My goal, in latter mode – and I’ve always been given either a required maximum running time or a significantly reduced cast size in these cases – has always been not to break the poor thing’s spine, but to adapt to the circumstances.

For example, when I was hired for Titus, I was told a) ninety minutes and b) modern mafia/Tarantino setting. (It will be performed in a storage warehouse – floor drains! – behind a gay bar in an area of Louisville known as Butchertown*. Writes itself.) So knowing that the space will be that intimate, when I cut for time I can take liberties with some lines like Marcus’s

          Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,

          Like to a rosy fountain stirr’d with wind,

          Doth rise and fall between thy rosèd lips,

          Coming and going with thy honey breath.

That’s lovely, but if something has to go, let it be something describing a visual to the cheap seats, seeing as we’ve eliminated the cheap seats and put everyone up close. They will notice the blood pouring from her mouth and Marcus still has plenty to say about it. In a perfect world I’m able to leave a stage direction to replace what’s been excised. If the beautiful pentameter provides useful info for the way the actor is being told by the text to respond ( “Gee fellas, I’m almost crying” is restated about eighty ways in the Folio) I’m careful about leaving that information in the right place even if the seven lines telling her to almost-cry are gone.

Beyond that, there’s the setting. Titus in this case is not just being played in a 21st century warehouse behind a club; it’s more or less set in one. So instead of shooting mean-spirited message-laden arrows around to make Titus’s feelings about Saturninus known, the same story point is made by visual means. (I won’t say how just yet – you’ll have to see the show if you’re in town.) And in some cases, the Tarantinocity is sold with soundtrack choices that do the job some of the language did before. And lots of blood. Did I mention blood?

The following is both preciously obnoxious and utterly unexaggerated. I have occasional conversations with Will about my choices. I try not to have them aloud for my wife’s sake, but I have them. The Will in my head is not a dainty poet. He’s a playwright whose shameless prime interest is in people liking his show. And if I have to explain to him changes in stagecraft over the last four centuries, so be it.

Me: They can’t just pee against the wall anymore, you know; they have to line up.

Will: Then by all means let’s put a bladder break in here for the sake of their attention.

Me: Great. Now, we’ve reminded them of this bit of info four times now. The people are all facing the stage, there’s a spotlight on the actor, they’ve paid $20 a pop and almost no one in the balcony is soliciting a prostitute. How about we cut two of the reminders?

He almost always understands. Then I have to explain electricity and economics, and it’s this whole thing, and I have to make him go away until I need him again.

(For the record, he looks exactly like Sam Crubish from the Bugs Bunny cartoon “A Witch’s Tangled Hare” (1959) co-starring Witch Hazel, but with darker hair. This, too, is utterly unexaggerated.)

I don’t feel nearly as bad about judicious prunings like this in a script like Titus, which like a few others is primarily a Plot Being Told and not, like say Winter’s Tale, a kind of opera, in that the story can be quickly summarized and much of the point of the evening is vamping about what’s going on in the characters’ emotional innards. Not that the innards aren’t important in Titus. (NEVER GOING TO STOP AMUSING ME.)

That’s your unasked-for glimpse into what I’m thinking when I go about these little enterprises Irving called, as I believe I said on here somewhere before, “arrangements”. Of course, Irving had his Macbeth wig arranged so it would “unfix” as the text demanded (if that’s really the word), and I’m just some over-read Midwestern actor with a blog, so. Grain of salt.

 

 

*and if anyone from Play, the bar in question, is reading this and is interested in an idea I have for a hilarious gender-bent Moliere adaptation to be done on your really splendid and enticing drag stage/runway, contact me. It would be brilliant.

Nay then, God buy you, an you talk in blank verse.–AS YOU LIKE IT, IV i

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Actors, especially of Shakespeare, will probably be bored by the following. For audiences/readers of Shakespeare, this may be interesting. I don’t know.

There’s a time in Shakespeare (any?) rehearsal where Job #1 is figuring out What on earth it is exactly that you’re even saying. Then usually comes the Why. Then, ideally, choosing a How that aids audience understanding of the What/Why. Anything that comes after is gravy or fight choreography. More fun.

Mingled in the What/Why/How somewhere is the poetic stuff, which should ideally be scarcely noticed by the audience but which should be tremendously helpful to the actor. I’m not going to get all jargony, but I’ll use one of the less famous and vital lines in Macbeth (II iv):

          Threescore and ten I can remember well; within the volume of which time I have seen hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night hath trifled former knowings.

 

That’s the pure sentence version, which isn’t too tough to figure out  – “I’m old and I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit in my day, but tonight made all that look pale.” Done. Old Man’s thought expressed; Ross’s turn to speak; Macbeth and the rest have some time to change out of their nightgowns, Macduff has time to pack a train case for Fife.

Now, some actors insist that’s plenty. Basic punctuation and word definition is all they need from a script. (I suppose there are also some singers and conductors that figure all those extra marks Mozart cluttered his page with that weren’t actual notes can be ignored, but I’m not an opera expert.)

If we were to write it out as it appears in verse it looks more like this:

          Threescore and ten I can remember well;

          Within the volume of which time I have seen 

          Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night

          Hath trifled former knowings.

And that’s different. Beside the old “da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM” (with variations) business that helps with the intended rhythm (WithIN the VOLume OF which TIME I have SEEN), there are those lovely, pesky mid-phrase turnarounds at the ends of the lines (seen/Hours, night/Hath). Some people feel like pausing to let those be heard makes for a distancing Ye Olde-ness, yet those same people often put in “naturalistic” pauses willy-nilly just as they do in a standard contemporary play.

But.

I’m of the firm opinion that as the years went by and he got ideas about this whole verse deal Shakespeare was trying to have and eat the cake – stylized lines that also sounded like a person was thinking them up as she went.

So to over-explicate the previous:

          Threescore and ten I can remember well; (chew on THAT for a minute, youngster)

          Within the volume of which time I have seen  (I’ve seen a lot – how shall I narrow this down?)

          Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night (I’m going to have to make up a word used nowhere else in these plays to express this)

          Hath trifled former knowings.

Then Ross pipes in with his usual Debbie Downer action. How is it that people don’t just break into a run when they see him coming? Even on the rare occasion when he brings good news (I ii), he makes you dangle for it:

DUNCAN: Whence cam’st thou, worthy thane?

ROSS:                         From Fife, great King,

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold.                                  (Half-line. He’s making us wait for it.)

Norway himself, with terrible numbers,

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor,          (I know, kid; I know who we’re fighting.)

The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict,   (Yes,  yes, hence the report,. Did we win?)

Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof,

Confronted him with self-comparisons,

Point against point, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm,

Curbing his lavish spirit; and to conclude,       (DID? WE? WIN?!)

The victory fell on us –

 

I should note that pausing isn’t what I’m talking about – these plays are plenty long enough as it is to the 21st century bladder– but light thought-hiccuping just as you do, just as anyone does when speaking aloud while figuring out what word comes next.

This is why actors get all fancy about doing Shakespeare. We’re putting in extra brain work that taxes the sort of person who goes into this business a bit more than the usual emotional/physical gooiness that is our stock-in-trade. Be gentle with us. Our brains, like those of Dr. Gumby’s patients, hurt.

Not in the legions/ Of horrid hell, can come a devil more damn’d/ In evils, to top [Insert opponent’s name here] – MACBETH, IV iii

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Not to get all political (because no one would in any way suggest Macbeth is a political play, and I say that with the full knowledge of the internet’s astounding inability to recognize even the most blatant sarcasm), but it’s difficult for me to hear the infamous Malcolm/Macduff scene (IV iii) in this production, or at least during this month, without hearing the current election cycle climate writ Olde.

The metaphor isn’t a precise one – I’m not quite sure whether Macduff is the undecided voter in this scenario willfully filling in some weird blanks for himself or if he’s the quite decided voter making excuses for the inexcusable evils his candidate represents and merrily dances with. Or possibly he’s practicing to be a campaign surrogate but understandably snaps after too many rounds of Cognitive Dissonance Twister. Also, it’s Malcolm who’s really doing the vetting, putting Macduff through a ruthless purity test resembling the sort that filled this primary season in particular (with exceptions). Also, candidate Malcolm’s bald-faced lies are a) apologized for, b) against himself.

(And for all the years of talk about the unusual tenor of this scene considering the relentless action & forward momentum the rest of the play affords, the oddest bit is still to me Malcolm’s admission that he is “yet/ Unknown to woman”. I get why it’s there, but it’s hard for me to imagine any other conversation with a passing political acquaintance in which that comes up. “PS, I’m a virgin.” Lady M. name-checked the sound of crickets some time ago, but here’s where they truly belong.)

I realize now it’s no use to quote bits of it – the whole scene up to the Doctor’s (weird, sucking up to English royalty) entrance plays out this way. Here it is in full. Read along and think charitably of poor Kellyanne Conway, who just hasn’t quite reached her “O Scotland, Scotland” moment, and less so of her boss, Malcolm’s photo negative in terms of integrity. You tell me who has The Best Words.

No, ‘tis impossible he should escape.–HVI3, IIvi

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Quick one:

So I came home from tech last night, made toddies for self and spouse (it’s turned off very suddenly rainy and cold here, I got a flat on my bike this afternoon, allergies, four hours of audiobook narration followed by seven hours of tech excluding supper, lemons that were about to go off…all kinds of good reasons for toddies), and peeked at the DVR to see what relaxation it might afford.

The other night was the end of the Turner Classic Movies month-long celebration of slapstick, programmed specifically for me, obviously, and part of their run of films from the latter end of the last century included one I haven’t seen for years but watched seemingly hundreds of times on cable in the mid-80’s (whenever they weren’t showing Beastmaster, as required by law), the Bob & Doug McKenzie epic, Strange Brew. Just the ticket, I thought. Big dumb fun, I thought. Empty the brain, I thought, with nostalgic goofery.

But before Greg Proops had even finished his intro, he said it: “Elsinore Brewery.” And I remembered: Strange Brew is more or less a moron’s (compliment in this context) version of  either Hamlet or Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, from the meta-story that begins the movie – and yes, I would watch a full-length version of Mutants of 2051 A.D – to the gender-swapped Hamlet & Ophelia equivalents (no one drowns, though Bob does beer-pee out an inferno) and the tainted-alcohol-based climax.

Heady stuff for an 80’s comedy about back bacon and a flying alcoholic skunk-dog.

I bring all this up because not only am I happily and gainfully employed by Shakespeare for the next year at least…I am haunted and accosted by him when I try to avoid him. This happens not at all infrequently. Which scans, I noticed after typing it, which awareness was followed by what a dramaturg friend calls a Chekovian Sigh. I’m no Pacino, I thank whatever gods may be for my unhistrionic soul, but just when I thought I was out, if for only a few hours, they pull me back in.

10 out of 12 today and tomorrow. Good knitting awaits.

All is confirmed, my Lord, which was reported.

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Now I just did Macbeth last year; twice, really. Spring was a 90-minute 7-actor cutting in which I was Duncan (killed onstage, so with the added fun of being asleep/dead across three cubes on uneven ground for a good fifteen minutes of that), the Doctor, what was left of Lennox, Seyton, First Murderer …maybe the apparition with the looking glass. It’s kind of a blur.

Then in July, a trimmed-but-full production in which I was simply the Porter and (more of) Lennox. It was my Little Track in a summer season with Kentucky Shakespeare in which the directors try very kindly to preserve everyone’s brain/body/ego by working towards a Big/Medium/Little track for most of the repertory company. I was Stephano (medium) in the Tempest, Petruchio (large, and with the “ch” sound, thank you) in Shrew, and calmly wound down the season with a single speech, a few dick jokes, some practically supernumerary exchanges and a little light group battling in Macbeth.

Which meant a lot of listening. I’ve played larger parts in Shakespeare and done others more – I even considered attempting the bar-bet-winning feat of memorizing all of Midsummer after my fourth production of it until real world concerns made me decide to spend that time and energy doing my job instead –  but I’ve probably never listened to one as many times as Macbeth. And as tech begins for the Actors Theatre of Louisville production today, I’m prepared to hear it about thirty more times before Hallowe’en and, not coincidentally if I know the director, Election Day.

And that listening means I’ve inadvertently played all the roles now, in my head, as all actors do when hearing other actors’ choices, gauging which parts you’d steal from them and which parts you’d change. I think I’d be a terrific Lady Macduff, and I think I finally get Malcolm now. Those would be very specific productions, I imagine. (I should mention that I’m 43, 6’2”, male, pale, and predominantly bald.) I’m not holding my breath.

This one doesn’t have an audience until Tuesday, so I have yet to reach that place with this production’s rhythms where I’m knitting in the green room and pondering the lines, but my history with the show puts me in the spot where the Famous Bits are of less interest to me than the little parts in between. I understand why “Tomorrow and tomorrow” and “Come, you spirits” and “If it were done” are as revered as they are, but this time I’m terribly pleased with Banquo’s fraught

And when we have our naked frailties hid,/ That suffer in exposure, let us meet…

which is a lovely way to word what is mostly a Shakespearean reminder that everyone is on stage in their PJs. That happens a lot in this one – there are a lot of “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” type lines that I’ve seen get madly overacted when I firmly believe is a straightforward comment on freaky weather that the audience is supposed to hear the irony of but that the character doesn’t notice at all and therefore the actor just needs to get out of the way of. Another good example is a minute earlier in the description of Duncan’s wounds Macbeth delivers to the crowd right after the murther is discoverèd:

…his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature/ For ruin’s wasteful entrance…

I don’t think he sees it as more that a figurative description…but we know better, don’t we? Makes one run one’s finger between neck and collar to let out the steam of awkwardness, don’t it?

Another bit I’m hearing more loudly this time is the oft-ignored-because-it’s-too-short-to-use-as-a-monologue bit just before (spoiler) Big Mac finds out his wife is dead:

I have liv’d long enough: my way of life

Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf

And that which should accompany old age,

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but in their stead,

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

Seyton?

(That’s my cue)

Had a nice conversation the other day with the actor playing the lead about why the man who’s been going on for the last little while about his prophesied invincibility would get all “Today is a good day to die” like that all of a sudden. It made me think of Gulliver’s visit to the struldbrugs of Luggnagg, technically immortal but without faculty or function by the age of eighty. “They can’t defeat you” doesn’t mean “life will be worthwhile”. And before that scene ends, it does get a heap less worthwhile.

Also that “sear/yellow leaf” bit is lovely, isn’t it, on its own as well as when considering, you know, the impending trees? This production’s Macbeth has been giving “obedience” a little jab in the direction of my last silent exit, seeing as how Seyton has been called twice already. And the “Curses, not loud but deep” and “mouth-honor” seem an utterly realistic, likely take on how he’ll be treated while ruling instead of a paranoid delusion, which he’s been having for several acts by then. Maybe he finally got a nap in before the forest headed over.

Speaking of Dunsinane, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Ents of Tolkien’s Middle Earth were a direct figo to Shakespeare after J.R.R. (I should like to think we’re on a first three initials basis after all these years) was disappointed that the moving forest wasn’t really going to be a moving forest. So he made a vengeful but lumbering (you should pardon) moving forest.

And to his credit, it’s a hell of an ending.