Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender

Lisa Wolpe’s solo show Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender officially opens to the public at the Rose Playhouse on the 14^th July and then runs until the 26^th. However, I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the show as the opening of the series of Transhakespeare workshops I’m currently involved in at the moment as a dramaturg.

Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender is the first in a projected trilogy of plays, dealing with different aspects of Shakespeare. Transhakespeare will eventually become the second. This first aspect deals with personalizing Shakespeare.

The production took the form of a series of Shakespearean speeches interspersed with reflections from Lisa upon her past, particularly centred around her father. The extracts from Shakespeare are related to his story. So her father’s wartime experiences and status as a war hero are followed by Henry V’s speech to the town of Harfleur; the feeling of being utterly outcast in his own country and having his entire family murdered in the Holocaust is explored through Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?”

Personally, I absolutely loved the piece. As an avid fan of cross-gender Shakespeare, Wolpe’s work with the LA Women’s Shakespeare Company has been of some interest to me for a while now. Set in the context of her recollections, new aspects of the speeches were made clear and her personal passion for Shakespeare was tangible. The Question and Answer session after the performance was just as interesting as the piece itself. The impact of cross-gender Shakespeare was discussed and how it affects the way in which an actor must interpret their role. So, for instance, when playing opposite a female Rosencratz or Gildenstein as a male Hamlet, the implication of a past romantic relationship can come through which naturally affects how furious he has to be at them for their deaths to make sense. It also affects how much he would be emotionally affected after they died.

Definitely a must-see for anyone interested in the development of Shakespeare productions in recent years and wanting to experience the work of one of the most notable proponents of cross-gender casting.

The Taming of the Shrew

First, an honest confession. I don’t like Taming of the Shrew. The starvation scenes when Petruchio is taming Kate smack a little too much of domestic abuse for me to read it as pure comedy; Bianca’s suitors all merge into one in my mind; and I can’t fully know if I’ll enjoy the production until the last scene as the treatment of Kate’s final speech inevitably affects my enjoyment of the play. Seeing as it’s one of Shakespeare’s classics, I’ve always been intrigued as to whether I will ever find a production that manages to redeem the play in my eyes. So when the Arrows and Traps theatre company twitter drew my attention to the fact that they were putting on a cross-cast production of The Taming of the Shrew near to me and dared me that they could make me enjoy the play, I had to take them up on their challenge.

From the opening, I already had a fair idea that this was going to be something special. The meta-theatrical scenes involving Sly, which are so often cut from performances, were retained in a way that took full advantage of their comedic potential. I think a fair few members of the audience, myself included, were initially convinced that the drunkard wandering onto the set with ‘theatre staff’ endeavoring to fend him off was separate from the play. This firmly set the agenda for this production, which had a strong emphasis on the deception elements of the plot as well as the themes of power and powerless. Sly’s apparent holding of power, when he holds none, and Petruchia’s fight to dominate Kay are cleverly drawn together in one of the most effective endings to the play that I’ve seen.

The action was set in a 1920s inspired setting and in addition to having actors of the opposite genders play the principle parts, their pronouns and names were altered to fit their new genders. So Lucentia falls in love with mummy’s boy Bianco, while Petruchia woos her Kay. One consequence of this gender-swap is that the disobedience of the husbands at the end of the play has far more dangerous undertones. The widower, in particular, is fairly physical with Hortensia. Kay’s final speech is thus coded more in terms of respecting their wives and treating them well, as it would be so easy for them to act brutishly.

While more menacing undertones are not fully lacking from the taming scenes, the company does its best to ease these fears. Petruchia appears genuinely regretful about the course of action she is undertaking and very concerned that what she is doing is out of love of Kay. Kay’s ultimate response at the end of the play appeared to treat the taming as Petruchia asserting her own equality in the relationship. Their final dynamic is a relationship strongly based on equality, as opposed to the other couples where all parties were battling for dominance. The strong chemistry between the actors playing Petruchia and Kay helped in selling this.

Overall? Phenomenal. I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’ve found a production of the Taming of the Shrew that I can not only tolerate, but thoroughly enjoy. I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

As is usually the case when I go to see something at the Swan theatre, my overwhelming impression after watching The Jew of Malta was ‘why is this not performed more often?’. Admittedly, the racism and anti-Semitism inherent in the text is undeniably a barrier, making Marlowe’s work an interesting choice to play alongside Othello and The Merchant of Venice in the main RST.

Barabas is probably one of the worse villains to grace the early modern stage: I couldn’t help but compare his speech delighting in all his wrong-doings towards Christians to Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, who takes similar glee in his crimes. Barabas is prepared to kill countless individuals, including his own daughter, in order to safe-guard his gold and gain revenge on those who have wronged him. The original text provides little opportunity for us to see his character sympathetically, with only the governor’s anti-Semitic decision to confiscate half of all Jews’ estates to pay the Turkish tribute serving as a potential motivation.

Justin Audibert, however, creates a more complicated picture in his production. In the first principle scene we witness Barabas being brutally beaten by the governor and his lackeys for refusing to surrender his goods. Having recently been to see the film The Woman in Gold, which deals so heart-rendingly with art restitution and the way in which wealthy Jews had their property confiscated by the Nazis, it was hard not to notice the more recent resonances of that image.

After such brutality, Barabas’s cruelty reads more as a result of the barbarities done to him and his people than inherent cruel-heartedness on his part. This impression is strengthened by the obviously strong bond between him and his daughter Abigail, whose touching devotion to her father and strong-willed nature is so excellently captured by Catrin Stewart. Abigail’s desertion after Barabas’s machinations cost her lover his life consequently reads as the tipping point, after which Barabas’s cruelty knows no bounds. With a less-gifted actor, it would be easy to read Barabas simply as a cold-hearted villain with no hidden depths. Jasper Britton, however, balances the many complexities of his character with skill. His Barabas is by turns pantomime villain; wronged father and citizen; and greedy miser. Bitingly funny, it was hard not to take a certain perverse pleasure in watching his many villainous exploits. Of special note is Lanre Malaolu, who provides an excellent foil for Britton in his portrayal of Ithamore. While Barabas is Machiavellian, Ithamore is almost grotesque in his glee at the evil deeds performed. Watching the two of them vie for control of each other (and of Barabas’s fortune) in the latter half of the play provided for some of the most entertaining and by turn horrifying scenes in the play.

The stylized nature of many of the deaths in this play is also worthy of mention. Marlowe has provided enough interesting death scenes in the production to fulfill any director’s wish and the execution of them more than paid off. One which particularly springs to mind is the image of four nuns gathered for mass. They begin to walk in a circle, singing in Latin with their rosaries out in prayer. Then the image becomes a more sinister one. They start to cough, foaming at the mouth as the poison begins to do its work, but they continue to walk in their circle in an endeavor to finish their devotions. Such an image is somewhat fitting for this black comedy of a production.

The Globe’s interpretation of The Merchant of Venice is the second of three productions of this play I’ll be seeing this year, having already enjoyed the Almeida’s revival of Rupert Goold’s 2011 RSC take on the play which moved the action to a Las Vegas casino and with the RSC’s current production still on my to-watch list. The Almeida’s production was incredibly innovative in interpreting the play, which has to be one of my favourites of Shakespeare’s works, so I was both nervous and excited for Jonathan Munby’s offering.

I needn’t have worried. One of my friends often describes Merchant as being an “anti-human” play, with the moral ambiguities of all the characters being ever-present as the action unfolds. This production very much followed those lines of thought. Dominic Mafham’s Antonio is violent towards Shylock. The scene where the bond is initially agreed upon is a prime example, with Antonio resorting to physical violence after very little provocation. His final conditions for Shylock to turn Christian and leave all his wealth to Jessica and Lorenzo are delivered almost gleefully, taking pleasure in Shylock’s obvious distress. Opposite Jonathan Pryce’s Shylock, who appears almost pushed into his decision to extract the bond after finally reaching his limit with the cruelties of the Christians, this contrast is even more striking. Yet Antonio is shown as sympathetic in places too. His unrequited love for Antonio remains ever in the subtext of the play. Finally, it is made explicit after the court scene. Antonio and Bassiano hug in celebration of their victory over Shylock and how Antonio’s life was spared. Antonio leans in for a kiss, Bassiano pulls away. It was a powerful moment, reminding the audience just how much Antonio was prepared to do for love of his friend with little chance of ever gaining reciprocation.

The highlight for me, though, was undoubtedly Phoebe Pryce’s portrayal of Jessica. Her struggle to transfer from Jewish to Christian society was constantly highlighted in her scenes. Having Jessica and Shylock deliver some lines to each other in Yiddish, for example, helped highlight the Jewish heritage that she was having to discard for Lorenzo’s sake. Throughout the second act, we see her gradually start to mimic the behaviour of the other Christian ladies, although going by her obvious jealousy of Portia, this appears to have been more influenced by her insecurities in her relationship with Lorenzo. One particularly beautiful moment for me was the end of the play. Instead of focusing on the Christian lovers at the end of the play, as usually happens, Munby chooses to make Jessica the centre of attention. She is the one handed the letter detailing Shylock’s ultimate fate, sinking to the floor and beginning to sing in Yiddish as the full implications of what Shylock’s future will be begin to sink in. Gradually, her singing is supplanted by the traditional Latin chant and stately music of a Catholic service. Shylock parades in, followed by a line of Catholic clergy, and baptised on stage. It was a moving end to one of the most interesting and beautifully done adaptations of Shakespeare I’ve seen recently.