This August in the Boston area, three productions from the Elizabethan canon illuminated the difficulty of extracting acting versions of these plays from texts printed four hundred years ago. "The Life of Timon of Athens" was presented outdoors by the Town Cow Theatre Company of Concord MA., while "Doctor Faustus" trod the boards down at the Boston Center for the Arts in an ensemble production by the Bridge Theatre Company, based in Jamaica Plain. As already reviewed (8/26), the Publick Theatre played "Hamlet" down by the Charles on the site of the almost forgotten Boston Shakespeare Festival. In each case the show's director had to edit available texts to suit the particular company available, the venue, and the economics of production. Such choices substantially affected their dramatic outcomes.
For years, the classics have been revived as college productions, by a few regional theatres, or at festivals, typically with substantial casts of varying ability, costumed in some acceptable period, and treated with deference. At the same time, reduced productions with sparse often modern costumes, few props, much doubling and gender-switching toured school systems to keep the Bard on the boards. And a few high profile radical reinterpretations made occasional news. Leading to a situation in the current theatre where any producing group of any size can take a crack at Shakespeare without being censured from the outset, from efforts such as "The Compleat Works... (Abridged)" or "Tiny Ninja Macbeth" to Shakespeare & Company's post-modern "Macbeth" seen this summer in Lennox.
All three plays under discussion have important textual problems. "Timon", one of Wm. Shakespeare's last works, a Jonsonian effort with extended philosophical discourse, may never have been presented publically, and seems unfinished. Characters are designated but unnamed, sub-plots are barely outlined, and towards the end of the piece various scenes as published may be out of order. Christopher Marlowe's"The Tragedie of Doctor Faustus" was twice registered with the Stationer's before his death in 1593, not performed officially until the following year, and published in an obviously amended fashion in 1604, and again with even more questionable additions a decade later. "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" was a major success for the King's Men where legend has it that the author played the Ghost himself, but exists in multiple editions published after his death differing by almost 1000 lines among them
The director of "Timon", Thomas Caron, who also took the lead, labeled his production as "transcendentalist", and set the play in the middle of the 19th century. The program/poster reinforced this by placing Timon's name under a daguerrotype of Thoreau and Apemantus, Timon's philosophical foil, under one of Emerson. The Town Cow Company shares members with the venerable Concord Players, a group which may just be able to trace its roots back to Louisa May and her sisters doing theatre at Orchard House just down the street. They certainly have ample costumes and practiced chracterizations for this period. Unfortunately, the actor playing Apemantus turned out to be unsuitable and left the company a little over a week before opening.
Fortunately, it proved rather easy to remove his scenes, which were largely with Timon, and get on with the play. Some of the subtler points about life and misfortune were lost, but the action of the play benefited. A more major change was already in place, since several characters had been switched from male to female, most notably Timon's steward, Flavius, now Flavia, played Lida McGirr , fussily concerned with his extravagance from Act I. Incidentally, there are no major female roles in the original text. The Poet and the Jeweler, played by Mikki Lipsey and Kerrie Miller , two beneficiaries of Timon's largesse, were also turned into female characters, with the Jeweler appearing later as Alcibiades' consort cadging gold from Timon in the woods. This real Athenian general and adventurer was played by Webb Tilney . The representative of Timon's creditors, Phrynia played by Liza Dickinson, was also female, of equal position with Flavia. Introducing a substantial female element makes this piece less cerebral, but still doesn't really salvage the ending, the biggest problem for this interesting minor play.
The Bridge Theatre has a ten year history of producing poetic and period works, along with some original scripts by one of its founders, Todd Hearon. This summer, Hearon, along with Jeffery Jones, another founder, undertook to play the lead in "Doctor Faustus". Jones played Mephistopheles, and in their scenes together, which are most probably completely Marlovean, were quite effective. The rest of director Michael F. Walker 's abridgement of the supporting crudely comic scenes, performed by an earnest company of eleven, were superficial at best. Walker and his dramaturg, Mike Pino, assembled a patchwork of sketches with little consistency, which provided little support for Hearon and Jones.
Since the Bridge Theatre uses a mixed company, various parts were gender switched, sometimes merely for convenience. A young women, Paula Carter played Faustus' servant Wagner, but also doubled--uncredited-- as the Chorus, of whom little was made, then appeared in the Seven Deadly Sins "masque" as Lechery. None of the men played female roles however. One black actor, Ozzie Carnan, Jr. was recruited from "Pan" which just closed in the same space, but wasn't given any significant roles.
Costuming was a mixture of contemporary and faux period, with a touch of bargain basement, while a potentially interesting set of adjustable wings was underused. The latter were made from black plastic sheeting with all the usual problems of permanent fold marks and static attraction of dust. Various neutral set units took too long to shift in the dark, which caused additional pacing problems. It is interesting to note that a smaller company of seven actors did a shorter version of the text in New York at the Midtown international this summer while Jude Law led a longer sparer production at the Young Vic last spring. More preparation and less busyness would have made this attempt worth the effort, and brought the confrontation between Good and Evil, in the mind of the title character, to the fore.
Finally, to the Publick's "Hamlet" text. As noted in the 8/26 AisleSay review, the evening began with the cast assembling onstage in the dusk for the first Court scene, I,2, with lights up on Claudius' welcome. Thus rather than beginning late at night with a ghostly visitation, the production plunged into the complex politics of the piece, which might be confusing to someone totally unfamiliar with the story. Still for an outdoor production starting at dusk, this was a reasonable choice, and informed the intrigue of the rest of the evening. It would have been more effective, however, had director Diego Arcineagas, who also took the lead in his piece, to have used this choice to inform his own characterization and that of others, notably William Church ’s Horatio, and even Nancy E, Carroll ’s Gertrude. On a second viewing after the cast had a chance to recover from our heat wave, these parts and that of Ophelia, played by Val Sullivan exhibited more development, but mostly internal. Unlike last season's RNT "Hamlet" , Arcineagas choose to keep and even emphasize the Fortinbras thread in the plot. More of a sense of potential threat would have heightened action, and even had some current political relevance. Certainly the possibility that support for Claudius was largely due to the immediate need for a strong political leader is in the text.
Each of these three theatres, ranging from community group to Equity-based will be seen next summer. The Town Cow has announced a version of "Hamlet" which may also be "transcendental". The Bridge will choose between several projects this fall. And the Publick will start their next season with "A MidSummers Night's Dream", which might involve students from their Young Company as well. Each group has plenty of time to work on their acting scripts and a lot of decisions to make, not to mention time to gather props, costumes, and other necessaries for these times.