Shakespeare magazine 03

SHAKESPEAREAt last! A magazine with all the Will in the world

Issue 3FREE

Celebrating

South America Shakes!The ShakespeareGuide to Brazil

Shakesbeard!One actor’s amazing

journey of Bard-relatedfacial hair

Unto the Breach

Love, war andHenry V with the Globe’s

Jamie Parker

Hail Cleopatra!A screen history of Shakespeare’s most fascinating femme fatale

!e life and works of William Shakespeare

!e Politics of

PowerStaging Henry IV

in Washington DC

Hour-Long Shakespeareexpertly abridged for performance and as an introduction to Shakespeare’s greatest plays

VOL ONE Henry IV, Part 1, Henry V AND Richard III

VOL TWO Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth AND Julius Caesar‘Matthew Jenkinson’s careful alterations of some of Shakespeare’s

most important plays may give us less than 50% of each play’s lines, but they convey far more than that percentage of each play’s

theatrical power. Moreover, they belong 100% to the highest traditions of both teaching and performing Shakespeare’s plays’.

Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-

Avon, and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham

Order now from www.johncattbookshop.com

Coming soon: Vol 3: A Mid-summer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night and The Tempest

http://www.johncattbookshop.com/

Welcome!is issue was originally released in July 2014. !e Rio World Cup was in progress, so we came up with a cover design inspired by Brazil’s national colours. !is was intended to "ag up our story on Shakespeare’s cultural in"uence in Brazil, you see. But sadly, the issue was nowhere near as successful as the ones that came before and after. With hindsight, I can understand now that when people looked at that cover they just didn’t see Shakespeare.

to Issue 3 of Shakespeare Magazine

Welcome!

SHAKESPEARE magazine 3

Photo

: D

avid

Ham

monds

And that’s a shame, because I think this issue contains some of our very best work. And I feel that I let down my contributors by not !nding them a bigger audience.

So here we are again, 17 months later. It’s the same issue, but it has an all-new cover, one that leaves you in no doubt that we’re all about "e Bard.

Inside you’ll !nd the aforementioned Shakespeare Guide to Brazil and a wealth of other features including a history of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra on screen, a rousing interview with Globe actor Jamie Parker, and a beautiful collection of French Shakespeare costumes.

If you’ve already read this one, then I thank you for joining us again. If it’s your !rst time, then I hope you’ll read it avidly and share it with your friends.

But above all, enjoy your magazine.

Pat Reid, Founder & Editor

ContentsShakespeare Magazine

Issue !reeJuly 2014

Founder & Editor Pat Reid

Art Editor Paul McIntyreStaff WritersMary Finch

Brooke !omasWriters

Francesca AmendoliaZoe BramleyTony HowardLivia LakomyKate Madison Helen Mears

Christopher TomkinsonPhotographyPiper Williams

Thank YouMrs Mary Reid

Mr Peter Robinson Web design

David HammondsContact Us

[email protected]

@UKShakespeareWebsite

www.shakespearemagazine.com

4 SHAKESPEARE magazine

Much ado about Rio 6“There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil,” sang Frank Sinatra. And, as we discovered, there’s also a decent amount of Shakespeare.


Issue 3FREE

Celebrating

South America Shakes!The ShakespeareGuide to Brazil

Shakesbeard!One actor’s amazing

journey of Bard-relatedfacial hair

Unto the Breach

Love, war andHenry V with the Globe’s

Jamie Parker

Hail Cleopatra!A screen history of Shakespeare’s most fascinating femme fatale

!e life and works of William Shakespeare

!e Politics of

PowerStaging Henry IV

in Washington DC

Contents!


“Beard to beard...” 24One actor. Several Shakespearean roles. And a staggering amount of facial hair.

!e history man 34From Hal to Henry to Hamlet, ex-History Boy Jamie Parker is the thinking man as actor.

“See you these clothes?” 40There are some things the French do better than anyone else. Wine, cheese, kings named Louis... and absolutely stunning Shakespeare costumes.

Washington heights 28For 20 years, director Michael Kahn dreamed of staging Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 in the US capital. In 2014 he made it happen.

Screen siren 14Quite possibly the most famous woman in recorded history, Cleopatra came to Shakespeare via Plutarch, and to 20th century audiences via cinema and TV...

!The Shakespeare Guide to Brazil


The Shakespeare Guide to Brazil!


We may have crashed out of the World Cup in less than glorious style, but one English player

has scored big in Rio and beyond. Livia Lakomy

presents The Shakespeare Guide to Brazil!

“Shakespeare is now well on his way to becoming a

national treasure in Brazil”


Actor and theatre impresario

produce and act in a Brazilian adaptation of the Bard.


!hakespeare and Brazil. Brazil and Shakespeare. For all the talk of the Bard’s universality, it took some 200 years after his death for these words to !t together. "ere is no indication that Shakespeare had ever heard of Brazil – back then just a colony of Portugal – or that he thought of that part of the world as anything more than ‘the West Indies’, a continent of Calibans. In the past century, however, Brazilians have adapted – and adopted – Shakespeare enough times and with su#cient quality that he is now well on his way to becoming a national treasure.

“Whenever Shakespeare is disguised as something else, he becomes a hit in Brazil”

!"#$%&'()*+,-((#Who knew Shakespeare had the answer for one of Brazil’s most persisting literary questions? For decades, readers and critics have wondered about Dom Casmurro, the 1899 literary masterpiece by Machado de Assis. Did heroine Capitu really cheat on narrator Bento Santiago? According to Bento, yes – she was Desdemona, but guilty. Even though Machado openly uses Othello as a source, it was only in the 1960s that American critic Helen Caldwell made the link explicit and therefore made the case not only for Capitu but also for Shakespeare’s seminal impact on Brazilian literature.


The Real Theatro São João was the

inaugurated in1813.

Jean-Baptiste Debret.

From the Canadian Slings & Arrows to the Brazilian Som e Fúriaa mini-series directed

Fernando Meirelle.

.'+-)/(##0-"1William Shakespeare had long been considered immortal before he made his mark on the Brazilian stage. In fact, there was little happening worthy of note on Brazilian stages before the Portuguese royal family ran away from Napoleon and settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1808. It was actor and theatre impresario João Caetano who, starting in 1835, mounted the !rst national productions of Hamlet, Othello and company and made them a hit. It was through his work that the words Shakespeare and Brazil started going together.

.#1+)%2)!"'21('+%#2"e Shakespeare known in Brazil throughout the 1830s and ’40s had very little to do with the one born in Stratford-upon-Avon. "e translations used as basis for the performances had been made not from the English originals, but from less-than-faithful French texts. Instead of Shakespeare’s wit and wisdom, audiences were presented with watered-down melodramas. Direct translations started being published only in the 1930s. But by the end of the century, readers and performers could chose from a variety of translations of almost all of his plays.



“Writing about football, Nelson Rodrigues made every match into a battle of Shakespearean proportions, as well as a metaphor for life”


Tarsila do Amaral) coined the

!"#$%&'()$*+$'&,-)!ough Shakespeare is incomparable, every country must have a playwright they can claim as their own Bard. In Brazil, the title deservedly goes to Nelson Rodrigues. Among other things, Rodrigues was a football a"cionado. Writing about the beautiful game, he made every match into a battle of Shakespearean proportions, as well as a metaphor for life. Would Shakespeare approve? Well, he was the one who once wrote: “Am I so round with you as you with me, that like a football you do spurn me thus?”

.,(/,'0($10--*20(*+3It seems logical that master wordsmith William Shakespeare would inspire great wordplay. Poet and cultural agitator Oswald de Andrade, in a brilliant turn of phrase, appropriated from him when de"ning the modernist movement he helped create in the 1920s: “Tupi or not Tupi, that is the question.” By mentioning the native-Brazilian tribe of the Tupis, he was asking the country an existential question worthy of Hamlet: what constitutes Brazilian art? !e answer: anything that can be cannibalised and made your own, including 16th century English playwrights.


Nothing to do with

these images (from an exhibition of

Brazil’s magic and


!"#$%"&'#$()*+One would like to call her our ‘Dark Lady’ but in her 90th year of life, Brazil’s greatest eminence in all things Shakespearean, Barbara Heliodora, gives the impression of having always been white-haired – and wise. Translator, critic, essayist and academic, she once noted that “Portugal’s lack of theatrical tradition was passed on to Brazil. !e Americans were colonised like us, but they got to inherit Shakespeare and company from their colonisers.” In her decades of work Heliodora has taken it upon herself to change this story.

Soap opera e a Rosa: Petruchio and Catarina get married in 1920s Brazil.

,$(&-&./$01)2Soap operas are one of Brazil’s biggest exports and it’s no surprise that many of their plots come from Shakespeare. Perhaps the most obvious and beloved example is that of 2000’s O Cravo e a Rosa which, in spite of its title (literally ‘!e Carnation and the Rose’), owes its main plot to !e Taming of the Shrew. Without bothering to change character names, the action is transposed to 1920s Brazil. !e soap was such a hit that it has already been re-aired twice in the appropriately named programme Worth Seeing It Again.



!"#$%&'$%&(#)*It seems that whenever Shakespeare is disguised as something else, he becomes a hit in Brazil. As soon as his name is brought up in the actual plot, however, his reputation for being ‘too di!cult’ gets in the way of popular acclaim. An example is the 2009 TV mini-series Som & Fúria, based on Canada’s excellent Slings & Arrows. Directed by Oscar nominee Fernando Meirelles, and doing its best to adapt Shakespeare to Brazilian reality, it just wasn’t popular enough to warrant a second season. But you should check out the DVD box-set.

+&$,-&./"0,Following in Shakespeare’s footsteps – in his theatrical entrepreneur version – a Brazilian producer aims to build his own replica of the Globe "eatre by 2016, a project reportedly approved by Shakespeare’s Globe in London. His plans include not only the playhouse, but an entire cultural centre that will promote a series of events and festivals. If all the world’s a stage, why not a Globe stage in the Brazilian countryside? It certainly bodes well for the future of Brazil’s captivating cultural romance with Shakespeare.



12+3454+6&!7+89!:9+29&;65469

It has never been easier to fall in love with Shakespeare’s work – it seems to be everywhere. A simple internet search will result in his complete works, numerous adaptations and basically all the information you need. "at is, of course, if you are #uent in English – which most Brazilians aren’t. To remedy this situation, several websites have been created in the past few years to make information about Shakespeare available in Portuguese. Some examples are Instituto Shakespeare http://www.institutoshakespeare.com.br and Shakespeare Digital http://www.shakespearedigitalbrasil.com.br

One of the web’s best sources for performances of Shakespeare is MIT’s Global Shakespeare Video & Performance Archive. Alongside adaptations from around the globe, Brazil is very well represented and, of the two dozen or so archives available, the best known is of Grupo Galpão’s Romeo and Juliet, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe "eatre. "is performance exempli$es the approach Brazilians take to Shakespeare – make it your own. Also worth a look on the website are Companhia Bufomecânica, Nós do Morro and Clowns de Shakespeare. http://globalshakespeares.mit

go to the circus in Brazil.

Barbara Heliodora: decades of work making Shakespeare accessible to Brazilians.

!Cleopatra


Carry on Cleo: Cabaret performer Meow Meow channels Cleopatra in this recent image.

Screen

Cleopatra!


Capricious, complex and endlessly fascinating, Cleopatra

is the most challenging of Shakespeare heroines.

Tony Howard explores cinema and television’s many attempts to capture her elusive essence.Screen

!Cleopatra


Cleopatra depicted in an 1888 oil painting by John William Waterhouse.

n 1970 Charlton Heston asked Orson Welles to direct him in a !lm of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

Orson: “Do you have a great Cleopatra?”Charlton: “We’ll pick an actress and you make her great.”Orson: “Believe me, if you don’t !nd a great Cleopatra, you can’t do this play.”

Some Shakespeare plays, like Macbeth and Hamlet, have been !lmed again and again. But not this one. Why?

“Charlton Heston rea!rmed the old theatre myth that Cleopatra was an impossible role, in which any actress must fail”

frightened !lm-makers. In Cleopatra (1934) Claudette Colbert was delightfully playful and ironic, but her director Cecil B DeMille still relied on spectacle to make his mark. So instead of hearing Enobarbus’ great speech “"e barge she sat in...”, moviegoers saw an astonishing symbolic sequence inspired by it. While men whipped leopard-skinned dancing girls, Cleopatra wined and dined Antony inside the massive uterine interior of her ship. As their passion mounted, its inner walls slid into slow rhythmic life. A drummer pounded. Tiered rows of oars pulsed back and forward. Symphonic music soared.

Many Shakespeare plays were !lmed in the years that followed, but not Antony and Cleopatra. Yet Charlton Heston called it

Cleopatra!


Eve Best as Cleopatra and Clive Wood as Antony in Jonathan

Munby’s Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Cleopatra fascinated late-Victorian painters and theatre managers alike. She’s at the heart of countless opulent paintings drenched in eroticism, orientalism and late-imperial splendour. "e actresses who played Cleopatra – and drew crowds in to see her boudoir – included in 1891 the Prince of Wales’ mistress Lily Langtry, which blurred the line between scandal and art. Inevitably, !lm directors became fascinated too.

Cleopatra: the movieFrom the moment that pictures could move, Cleopatra became a fantasy !gure for spectators in the dark. Her mummy came to life in a Méliès short in 1899. Later the ‘vamp’ "eda Bara played her in a silent epic based on a French drama by Victorien Sardou and a red-blooded H. Rider Haggard novel, plus some moments suggested by Shakespeare.

Films about Cleopatra and her last lover always recall Shakespeare slightly because he followed his historical source, Plutarch’s Life of Antony, so closely and made its images iconic. But of course wordless silent cinema could only mimic scraps of the ‘in!nite variety’ of Shakespeare’s Queen. It could o#er passion, su#ering and splendour but not her intelligence and wit. And as the Italian !lm mogul Carlo Ponti warned Charlton Heston, “It’s a poem play.”

Even when sound came in, poetry

“Shakespeare’s best screenplay”. !e attraction of this empire-toppling romance was especially obvious to a star who’d made his name in Biblical epics, so when Orson Welles said no, Heston directed it himself – and used discarded battle footage from Ben Hur.

Antony: the epic!ough Heston’s Antony and Cleopatra (1971) is little-known, in some ways he did a commendable job. His script provided a more direct narrative than Shakespeare’s. For instance, he gave Enobarbus several minor characters’ speeches to strengthen his choric role, and when Antony overhears the great ‘barge’ speech it drives him to "y

to Cleopatra. It’s a shock-cut transition that splits the #lm and the world in two.

!e casting? Heston #rst thought of movie stars for Cleopatra, including Sophia Loren and Ann Bancroft from !e Graduate – “I don’t know if she’s ever done Shakespeare”. He rejected “the new girl” Glenda Jackson, who certainly had “done Shakespeare” (“She’s good, but not right for Cleopatra”) and instead he settled on the inexperienced Hildegard Neil. Heston’s published journals give ambiguous insights into his priorities and his sense of the role’s demands. “She can read verse, she can act...” “...I couldn’t tell whether she’s quite up to acting Cleopatra, but she seems to have the

!Cleopatra


“After a century of male directors, two eminent Cleopatras took control of the play – Janet Suzman and Vanessa Redgrave both directed it twice”

Turkish star Zerrin Tekindor as Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe, 2012.

Reviews were bad. When the !lm couldn’t !nd a distributor in America, Heston considered a bizarre proposal to “reshoot the role of Cleopatra”. It o"ered “the nagging possibility of saving my lovely project.” “My lovely project” is the most revealing critique of this !lm.

In one sense Heston’s approach wasn’t uncommon. He rea#rmed the old theatre myth that Cleopatra’s in!nite variety made her an impossible role, in which any actress must fail. Laurence Olivier found it a problem that Antony, wavering unpredictably between Egypt and Rome, is only seen in decline. Typically and unsurprisingly, then, Stratford avoided Antony and Cleopatra from 1953 to 1972, the National from 1963 to 1987.

But meanwhile two solutions developed. To present Antony and Cleopatra as a sequel to Julius Caesar, so that we and Antony are haunted by memories of his triumphs there. And to treat this play as a study of character, of mutual infatuation in fading middle-age. Putting it di"erently, the solution was television.

Cleopatra in the house$e TV screen proved itself this sprawling tragedy’s perfect home – unspectacular but intimate, more ‘real’. Two !ne anti-romantic BBC versions portrayed Mary Morris (1963) and Jane Lapotaire (1981) as powerful and political mature women, grimly conscious of passing time. $eir Antonies became pitiful – ashamed of their own weakness, and doomed.

In 1963 Peter Dews edited three of Shakespeare’s Roman plays into a BBC serial called $e Spread of the Eagle. Mary Morris, who had already been an actress for nearly 40 years, created a weather-beaten but imperious ruler, contemptuous of Rome. $is monochrome small-screen Egypt (the !nal episode is on the BFI’s Screenonline website www.screenonline.org.uk) is a harsh enclave where the only beauty comes from the language. After nine 50-minute episodes tracing Rome’s rise from a small town (Coriolanus) into an imperial dictatorship, the death of Morris’s Cleopatra marks the end

requisite erotic X.” After screen tests, his producers had their doubts. “Maybe so,” he wrote, “but I can’t wait for the perfect Cleopatra. Now is the time for me to play Antony.” Ignoring Orson Welles’ advice, he also ignored the demands and the complexity of the role.

Heston devised some powerful action sequences to demonstrate Antony’s greatness – he !ghts an army single-handed, he and his horse plummet down a rock face, and while he negotiates with Octavius Caesar they watch two gladiators !ght to the death. At times his passion for Cleopatra registers as brutal – he hits her – in fact almost insane. $is is Antony’s tragedy, a study of humourless obsession. But Heston paid no such attention to his marginalised and under-cast Queen. Hildegard Neil’s scenes are played out %irtily in a half-empty set. $e basic camera set-ups and reaction-shots favour him, not her. And – crucially – she dies beside Heston’s Antony, not alone with her women.

Cleopatra!


Theda Bara infamously played Cleopatra in a


!Cleopatra

“A Seductress. A Sorceress. A Witch...”

Francesca recently played Cleopatra

in Antony and Cleopatra (Harrisburg Shakespeare Company,

Pennsylvania, USA)

Actress Francesca Amendolia explores the illusion and reality of Shakespeare’s Cleopatra.

“Cleopatra, that ‘triple-turned whore’, carries a lot of baggage. !ose straight-road-building Romans could not encompass her, so they trash-talked her, their histories reducing her to an Eastern seductress, a sorceress, a witch. Shakespeare had only Roman sources, yet he saw through Roman fear and made her a still point in a whirling world of political change. !roughout the play, Antony and Octavius nervously vie for power while Cleo revels in her own authority. She is well-educated, powerful, passionate, sexual – and she owns every bit of it. Cleopatra is what every woman, every person, should aspire to be – fully and entirely herself, without apology.”

Phot

o: Br

iann

a D

ow

of a world. Years later, Antony and Cleopatra was the !rst play Jonathan Miller directed for the BBC TV Complete Shakespeare series. He took the whole project over, determined not to mimic Hollywood on the cheap (particularly after a disastrous Romeo and Juliet in a plywood Verona). Miller domesticated Antony and Cleopatra.

Jane Lapotaire, then best known for playing Edith Piaf, stressed that the essential thing about Cleopatra was “her great charisma and intelligence”, her “inventiveness and excitement”. Her Antony, Colin Blakely, added: “Let’s face it, they are not really the most beautiful young couple in the world any more – except to each other.”

Miller o"ered a Renaissance vision of Egypt and Rome. He based the production on works of art, especially by Veronese, and it became a series of late-Renaissance paintings come to life (limited life – there’s hardly any physical action). Here are glowing, chiaroscuro portraits of lived-in faces; great men and women are crammed into tiny rooms; the sea-battle is replaced by a painting and quotations from Plutarch. Miller exploits the camera’s power to break in on intimacy, so the opening scene is whispered (“If it be love indeed, tell me how much”) during a public procession. Lapotaire’s Queen mischievously undermines Antony’s struggle to maintain his dignity. In Miller’s interpretation, we begin close to the start of their relationship. #is Antony wants to escape, and thinks he can.

Miller’s team give each snatch of dialogue, each muttered confession or quarrel, great force. #e text is understood – in fact characters are allowed to be inarticulate, searching for words instead of Reciting Verse. #ese lovers are a distraught and helpless couple – unable to control events or themselves, panicked into outrageous acts and then “frighted out of fear”. When Lapotaire’s Cleopatra picks up the asp, we see horror in her eyes, and then release.

#is emotional realism irritated many

Joaquina Kalukango (front) as Cleopatra in the 2013 RSC production.

critics – Antony and Cleopatra became the greatest soap of all time – and it’s true that Miller’s understated approach suppressed dramatic rhythm and political con$ict. Another strategy for screening Shakespeare, of course, is to record a theatre performance. Can that work here? In 1972 Trevor Nunn at the RSC borrowed #e Spread of the Eagle’s idea of staging the Roman plays as a cycle, and then adapted his Antony and Cleopatra for TV in a stripped-down, tightly-focused style, with little but the actors in white space or darkness.

#e RSC had the advantage of a powerful cast who’d played their roles for two seasons, and a visual style which surrounded them with blazing light. #is evoked Egypt’s heat yet suggested transcendence. Less was more. Janet Suzman’s now-legendary Cleopatra was watchful, alluring and supremely self-con!dent – a passionate performer. #e production looks dated now, with its museum-shop images of togas and Tutankhamen’s tomb, but it suggests grandeur

“Wordless silent cinema could only mimic scraps of the ‘in!nite variety’ of Shakespeare’s Queen”


Cleopatra!


!Cleopatra

Beyond the screen at the Globeof English at the University of Warwick. This August the Globe will host his talks on two of Shakespeare’s greatest works and their on-screen counterparts.

Thursday 7 August: Anthony and Cleopatra Wednesday 27 August: Julius Caesar Time: 6.00-7.00pmVenue: Shakespeare’s Globe, LondonTickets: £7 (£5 concessions)

Book tickets from www.shakespearesglobe.com or call 0207 401 9919

Shakespeare at 450Howard on Shakespeare (in italics) is part of Globe Education’s summer season.

To book tickets, call 0207 401 9919 or go to www.shakespearesglobe.com

from the !rst moment when Antony and Cleopatra emerge dressed as gods.

Ever since, Trevor Nunn’s minimalism has in"uenced most small-screen Shakespeare. His Antony and Cleopatra was politically signi!cant as well. For the !rst time, a British Shakespearean production employed a substantial number of non-white actors (one was the young Joseph Marcell, currently touring as the Globe’s King Lear). #is was important, and this continent-spanning drama remains a register of British theatre’s willingness to embrace wider ethnicities. In 1991 Yvonne Brewster’s Talawa #eatre presented an all-black production with Dona Croll as Cleopatra. Croll’s successors include such brilliant actresses as Cathy Tyson (1998), Josette Bushell-Mingo (2005) and Joaquina Kalukango in the RSC’s 2013 Anglo-American production where the director-dramatist Tarell Alvin McCraney relocated the play to the Haitian revolution against Napoleon.

So over the last 20 years the ground has shifted. After a century of male directors, two eminent Cleopatras have taken control

Screen Queen Claudette Colbert played Cleopatra in

of the play – Janet Suzman and Vanessa Redgrave have both directed it twice. And by casting black actors as Antony (including Je$ery Kissoon and David Harewood), they have both challenged old notions of racial di$erence and indeed identity. As Antony discovers, we shift and reshape ourselves continually, like the clouds.

What’s next? #is summer Shakespeare’s Globe in London is staging Antony and Cleopatra with Eve Best, so we can expect a Globe on Screen ‘live’ transmission to follow in cinemas soon, yet another rede!nition of the genre. And after her mercurial but down-to-earth Beatrice, the omens are good.

“We’ve not had a great Cleopatra for some time,” the Stage reviewer has just written. “Best comes close to ideal.” Perhaps Orson Welles’s ghost will be pleased.

Antony and Cleopatra is running at Shakespeare’s Globe until 24 August. Go to www.shakespearesglobe.com to book tickets.

“Beard to Beard...”

Sydney-based actor Christopher Tomkinson returns to Shakespeare Magazine with his

!ere’s lots of reasons to grow a beard. Sometimes you just want to look a bit more "erce than you usually do.


!Shakesbeard!

A cting in Shakespeare’s plays has usually involved hair on my face. I love it – my wife, not so much. From the bushiest of bushranger beards to outrageous handlebar moustaches

wider than my face, there’s a never-ending follicular cavalcade around my smile. Here’s the journey of my last few shows and their Shakesbeards!

Or more like a sailor – the Boatswain from !e Tempest – roaring in futility against the surges. Because a real man of the sea doesn’t shave.


Shakesbeard!!

Or older... !is beard was trying to balance age and style while adding as many years as I could to a vain Baptista Minola (father of a shrewish daughter in need of taming). I painted it with ever-more grey as the season went on.

Sometimes you have to grow into a role – even while performing another. Here, a Weimar-inspired cabaret act is complemented by my upcoming Shakesbeard.

Beards get itchy as they grow. Here, in a "t of itch-induced madness, the director has to stop me trying to shave with two sabres while we rehearse the "nal "ght between Macbeth and Macdu#. (Sport for Jove !eatre)

My "rst big handlebar (for Charles the Wrestler in As You Like It) eventually reached these extreme lengths. !e hardest part was getting the right wax to hold it in place. I had to try "ve di#erent varieties before I found one strong enough!

Sometimes a beard evolves. Here I am having an early costume check for the Ghost in Hamlet.

At the start of the second season I looked like this.


!Shakesbeard!

By the end of the second season it had reached this wild woolliness. It was good for winter!

One hair piece can grow out of another as one ridiculous character emerges from the shavings of another. Hidden within the Ghost beard was a new handlebar ‘mo’ for a new villainous cretin, and it wasn’t even for a Shakespeare. At this point my lady really did despair of ever seeing my face again.

Finally a show with no beard – so they stuck this on my face instead!

All’s Well !at Ends Well (Sport for Jove !eatre). Your French military beard, streamlined and stylish.

Attempting to recreate the Chandos Portrait with a true ‘Shakesbeard’ for Bell Shakespeare and Google’s celebration of the Bard’s 450th birthday.

Finally I’m back to this – I’ve almost forgotten how to shave properly.

Intelligent.Cultured.Aspirational.


Alison Williams, 23 – Pennsylvania, USA

Shakespeare Magazine has readers all over the world.

They love reading, writing, thinking, talking and sharing.

and healthy living.

And they love to experience Shakespeare wherever they go.

Shakespeare Magazine is only three issues old.

But we already know our readers really are something special.

To advertise in Shakespeare Magazine, contact [email protected]

!Henry IV in USA


This year, a theatrical epic was unleashed in the heart of the US capital. Mary Finch applauds the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s thrilling six-hour dual production

of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2

Henry IV in USA!


Prince Hal (Matthew Amendt) faces the looming responsibilities of kingship.


Edward Gero is a Henry IV haunted by his past and

tormented by his future.

!Henry IV in USA

Hotspur (John Keabler) rallies his troops at Shrewsbury.

experience of being on stage – especially on stage performing Shakespeare – is like entering a diamond mine.

“You have to !nd in that particular performance the jewels that will come forth,” he explains, “as a result of the other actors and the direction and the audience.”

"e jewels of the performance become especially evident in the moments between Keach’s boisterous Falsta# and Matthew Amendt’s Hal, portrayed as a young man running from the responsibilities of adulthood and impending kingship.

For Amendt, Hal is far more than just another character in a rising actor’s repertoire. He already has history with the character from playing the lead in Henry V (Guthrie "eater, 2009). But his familiarity goes way


“What is honour?” asks Stacy Keach’s Falstaff.

"e seeds for the production were !rst sown 20 years ago, when the STC staged an adapted version of the story.

“I put the two plays together,” explains the company’s venerable and much-honoured Artistic Director Michael Kahn. “I made an edit, as is often done, of Henry IV with Part 1 and Part 2 together. As I was working on that I felt that I was cheating the audience from what really the experience of this could be.”

Two decades later Kahn returned to Henry IV determined to deliver his full vision. What resulted was a narrative stretched across two powerhouse plays that explore the human experience with compelling virtuosity.

At the centre of the production – and the story – is the totemic !gure of Falsta#, played by veteran actor Stacy Keach. Now 73, Keach is well known on both sides of the Atlantic for his !lm, TV and voice-over work. But it’s the stage that is truly his home. For Keach, the

Half-way between the towering dome of the United States Capitol building and the unmistakable facade of the White House sits Sidney Harman Hall. Like its iconic neighbours, the Hall has seen plenty of battles for power in its time – albeit largely con!ned to the stage. And none have been more epic than the recent presentation of both parts of Henry IV by the Shakespeare "eatre Company.

Henry IV in USA!

“Even though Falsta! is funny, he is also a tragic character. He has a dark side as well as a light side”Stacy Keach

Hal’s turn to ascend the makeshift throne, he initially mimics the style of Falsta!, throwing out insults and jests. But in a moment, Hal loses his smile and replaces the mirth with tears.

“It comes to this awful conclusion,” says Amendt, describing the end of the second play and the Prince’s brutal termination of his relationship with Falsta!, “and I think in our performance it’s as di"cult for Hal as it is for Falsta!.”

Of course, these plays go beyond the

back to when he #rst read the plays at the age of just seven.

“He felt like a big brother to me,” the actor says, “somebody to take care of me and keep me on the straight and narrow. Of course, as I got older the ambiguity of the plays and the cruelty of all the characters – Hal certainly can be very cruel – came through, and it became more challenging for me.”

Keach likewise takes on the duplicitous nature of Falsta!, recognising that he is much more than a mere clown providing comedic relief. “Even though he is funny,” Keach says, “he is also a tragic character in many ways. He has a dark side as well as a light side.”

$e famous play-within-a play scene at the Boar’s Head Tavern gives both actors a chance to show the two sides of their characters. Posing as the king, Falsta! denies the accusations against him, while simultaneously disowning all his other comrades. When it is


Bedroom battles with Hotspur (John Keabler) and Lady Percy (Kelly Curran).

!Henry IV in USA

“It encompasses all of the things that happen in war when people you love die” Michael Kahn


“It comes to this awful conclusion. And I think it’s as di!cult for Hal as it is for Falsta"”Matthew Amendt

friendship of Hal and Falsta!. For the director, it was the uniquely wide-reaching scope that made these plays worth the full six-hours.

“All problems of human existence are investigated in some way,” Kahn says. “Issues of class, issues of family, issues of politics, issues of power, issues of age and aging, friendship, ambition.”

Adding romance and tragedy to the story is the "ery relationship between Lady Percy (Kelly Curran) and Hotspur (John Keabler). Under Kahn’s direction, Keabler and Curran embody a married couple that know each other well enough to argue bitterly yet still love deeply, making their "nal goodbye scene potently emotional.

“In that goodbye scene she loses her

husband,” says Kahn, “and that encompasses all of the things that happen in war when people you love die.”

Caught between the Shakespearean titans of Hal and Falsta!, in some ways the part of Henry IV himself is often overlooked. Edward Gero stamps his authority on the role, and the powerful deathbed scene between Hal and his father is pregnant with guilt and shame.

“It’s a much darker play,” Keach argues. “And yet there is a great comedy in Part 2, with Shallow and Silence, and the relationship with Falsta! and the Lord Chief Justice.”

Even though it took 20 years to make it happen, Michael Kahn knows the company have achieved something great in putting these plays on simultaneously – sometimes both in the same day. “If I never do another Shakespeare play again,” Kahn re#ects at the end of the run, “I’ve done these two plays that I wanted to do. And it was an extraordinarily ful"lling experience.”

Henry IV in USA!

Falstaff, Justice Shallow, Bardolph and Justice Silence provide comic relief in Part 2.

Port

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!Interview: Jamie Parker


“I don’t know how to describe it, but something happens and it leaves you just feeling completely rejuvenated. It leaves you changed. It’s an elixir.” Jamie Parker

it’s not going well, if your audience is not very attentive, it’s rainy, whatever, then that’s what you have to work with.”

What was your first role there?

“As You Like It, directed by Thea Sharrock, I played Oliver de Boys. It’s a beautiful play. I had no particular desire to play Oliver and it ended up being a quite significant experience. I don’t think you see As You Like It coming – a play about forgiveness, reconciliation, conversion, transcendence and joy. It’s somehow easier to think that plays about misery and doom and gloom are more truthful, are somehow more about what life is really like. Until a play like that comes along and, if you get inside it right,

Interview: Jamie Parker!


How does it feel to step into the Globe’s famous Wooden O for the first time?

“It’s terrifying. It’s actually kind of a moment of insanity, a bit like jumping out of a plane or doing a bungee jump. Something exhilarating where you’re very much out of your element. You rehearse in a normal rehearsal room, and I remember going onto the stage for the first time. I remember coming on through the upstage left stage door, walking down to the pillar and thinking, ‘Oh, big, isn’t it?’ Even empty the place is incredibly powerful, there’s nowhere quite like it. The simple lesson I’ve learnt there is the only thing you’ve got to work with is whatever’s going on in the room. So if

He was in the original cast of theatre phenomenon The History Boys. And he’s an audience favourite at Shakespeare’s Globe, where he wowed London audiences as

Prince Hal and King Henry V. Helen Mears has an audience with actor Jamie Parker.

Thehistory man

there are other things that life is really like as well. And it’s actually a lot harder to write about joy and laughter than it is to write about pain and misery. It’s quite extraordinary that Shakespeare had the guts to write that play as well as King Lear. To write the play that asks what would life be like if we could forgive each other and find reconciliation?”

When did you first fall for the Bard?

“I was eight years old, watching Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V. I was rapt for two hours. It’s very much a play for a male, nascent psyche. It’s about crossing the threshold from boyhood into manhood, so I was right in the crosshairs. I probably fell in love with the Chorus before I fell in love with Henry. That was the first time I had been handed that contract and been asked to sign it, saying we’re nothing without your imagination. We’re just fully grown adults in silly clothes unless you make us exist. To my mind no one has ever said it better. A little later I saw Olivier’s Henry V. I’d never seen a Shakespearean playhouse before and when I saw the oak boards, the groundlings and the pillars, that’s when it clicked. That’s when I went ‘Yeah, it’s that role and it’s that theatre.’ At that point the current Globe didn’t exist, but basically for 25 years before I started the role, I wanted to play that role, in that costume, in that theatre.”

After drama school you spent two years with The History Boys. How did you find your way back to Shakespeare and the Globe?

“I think one of the reasons it took me so long to get there was that by the time I’d left college I’d grown quite distrustful of Shakespeare productions in Britain generally. It had been a long time since I had felt intoxicated by Shakespeare as I had been intoxicated when I was a child – just feeling like you were hearing them for the first time. The stand-out moment was when I saw Mark Rylance playing Hamlet at the Globe. I’d never seen

anything quite like that before. I can pinpoint the moment where everything that I thought I knew about Shakespeare was turned on its head, which was where he was doing the ‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I’ speech. He was unpredictable and you didn’t know what he was going to do next. During the speech he went ‘Hah!’ and a small child in the groundlings went ‘Hah!’ in reply and he suddenly engaged in this back-and-forth, almost in tongues. I remember thinking, ‘Can you do that?’ But it worked. I’d never seen anyone be quite so irreverent with Shakespeare before. That was the moment when I realised that Shakespeare is really alive. I’d forgotten that boyhood dream but when the opportunity to work at the Globe came up, I took it. I didn’t see it coming and I didn’t work towards it – it just sort of happened and it happened at the right time.”

What was so appealing about this opportunity?

“It gave me a chance to work with Dominic Dromgoole again, he gave me my very first acting job. And it was a great joy to find out that Roger (Allam) was going to be playing Falstaff in the Henry IV plays, because I’d grown up listening to him. A lot of what I knew about performing Shakespeare had come from Roger and people like him. If the plays did have any success outside of Roger’s extraordinary presence on the stage, I’d like to think it was a kind of mentor-pupil relationship. There was that feeling that we’re on the same page and I’m coming up behind you. I’m going to try my best to top you, I know I can’t succeed, but I’ll try.”



“As You Like It is a play about forgiveness,

reconciliation, conversion, transcendence and joy.”

Jamie Parker plays the title role in the

Shakespeare’s Globe production of Henry V.


Interview: Jamie Parker!Ph

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Was it the chemistry between you and Roger that made those productions so popular?

“All I know is that I felt his absence on Henry V profoundly. I hope that was to the benefit of the production because you should feel the absence of Falstaff in Henry V, and that’s not always the case.”

Did performing the whole Hal-to-Henry journey provide insights for when you played Henry V?

“Well, it was bound to have a profound effect. We worked a lot with Act 2, Scene 5, the moment that foreshadows Hal’s rejection of Falstaff. Dominic said to me to think about the way that Shakespeare was working with a particular acting company and that he wrote a great part for an established actor, a virtuoso role. But he also wrote another role for another younger actor who’s coming

up behind, and to remember that this is a competition going on for the audience’s favour. When we did ‘I know thee not, old man’, we tried it several different ways and Roger said to me, ‘You’re not doing enough with that line to stop me in my tracks. You need to top me.’”

And when you yelled ‘Cry God for Harry, England and St George’, did you feel the groundlings would have run up on stage and followed you off?

“There were days like that. There were a small handful of performances that I will take to my grave with me. There are rare moments in that theatre where you just feel it, something happens. I don’t know how to describe it, but something happens and it leaves you just feeling completely rejuvenated. It leaves you changed. It’s an elixir.”


Olivia Ross as Princess Katherine opposite Jamie’s Henry V.


Phot

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Why does Hal snub Falstaff at the end of Henry IV, Part 2? Does he have to do it?

“I think that’s it. I think it’s necessary. That’s the question all the way through Henry for me. Practically every scene has that question of did Hal have to act that way? Henry V asks what life would be like if there was a young man who could display all of the qualities required to become a great chivalric king. What would they be like, what would they have to do and how would they do it? What does it mean to ‘assume the Port of Mars’? That line brings with it mystic qualities that the actor is expected to embody when they come on to the stage. The moment when he rejects Falstaff is one of them. He has to. We’ve already had the Henry VI plays showing what happens when a King doesn’t do what needs to happen – you can’t have Falstaff sitting next to the throne of England and expect things to go well!

“It strikes me as significant that these were the last of the History plays that Shakespeare wrote. We’ve had seven plays about life under disorder and misrule and kings who aren’t equal to the office and about what happens when fallible humans are put into a position anointed by God. That rejection to me is the moment where Henry goes ‘enough’. It’s not that he’s never fun ever again, but he realises the importance of good husbandry, of being decisive, of laughing at hardship, of giving due significance to the notion of good order. They’re things that Henry is written to embody and the previous seven plays have been written to lack.”

Whose idea was it to play the St Crispin’s Day speech so small? I’ve never seen it done quite like that.

“Not everybody liked it. I think some people have preconceived notions of what that speech should be. It was very delicate and that meant it could go badly. I’m glad we did it, because when it did succeed it spoke for itself and it suddenly became immovably strong as a presence in the theatre. What he’s saying is that we’re already dead and that’s how we’re going to live forever.”

You recently did Hamlet for BBC Radio. Would you like to play that role on stage?

“Yes, I would. It was great doing it. I’d never imagined it as a possibility but when it came up I thought ‘great’. It was weird though, because it was basically ‘Turn up and record Hamlet’, we only had a day of read-through and rehearsal. It was terrific. I’d basically known Hamlet all my life and that means you just know passages of it. It was great because it was like ‘you’ve read it, now just do it’!”

You appeared in the film Valkyrie with superstar Tom Cruise. What was it like when he then came to see you at the Globe?

“That was so surreal – talk about worlds colliding. It was brilliant. What a dude. He didn’t have to do that and I really didn’t expect him to come. He was brilliant and he met everyone afterwards. I was terrified that he was going to be bored but if he was he didn’t let on.”

Jamie plays Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls at Chichester Festival Theatre from 11 August to 21 September.


Interview: Jamie Parker!

“We’re nothing without your imagination. We’re just fully grown adults in silly clothes unless you make us exist ”

An exquisite exhibition in Moulins, France celebrates a century of Shakespeare. Running until January at Centre National du Costume de Scéne,

Shakespeare, the stuff of the world is a testament to the creative magic unleashed when French couture meets the Bard.


!Shakespeare costumes

“See you these clothes?”

Costume by Jacques Schmidt for Gertrude, worn by Marthe Keller in Hamlet, directed by Patrice Chéreau, Avignon Festival followed by Nanterre, Théâtre des Amandiers, 1988. Coll. Théâtre des Amandiers.


Shakespeare costumes!Left: Costume by Jacques Schmidt for Fortimbras in Hamlet, directed by Patrice Chéreau, Avignon Festival followed by Nanterre, Théatre des Amandiers,1988. Coll.Théâtredes Amandiers.

Shakespeare, the stuff of the world runs until 4 January 2015, priced just !6 for entry (concessions available). Go to http://www.cncs.fr for more details. For information about visiting central France: http://www.pays-bourbon.com



Costume by Jean-Pierre Vergier for the King of Comedy, worn by Jean-Baptiste Malartre in Hamlet, directed by Georges Lavaudant, Comédie-Française, 1994. Coll. Comédie-Française.

Costume by Thierry Mugler for Lady Macbeth, worn by Catherine Ferran in Macbeth Tragedy, directed by Jean-Pierre Vincent, Avignon Festival – Comédie-Française, 1985. Coll. CNCS/Comédie-Française.


Shakespeare costumes!


Headdress by Abdelkader Farrah for Lady Anne, worn by Ludmilla Mikael in Richard III, directed by Terry Hands, Comédie-Française – Avignon Festival, 1972. Coll. CNCS/Comédie-Française.


1July is named after Roman Emperor

Julius Caesar. In Shakespeare’s play about Caesar’s assassination, who warns him to “beware the Ides of March”?

2 The historic battle of Shrewsbury was

fought on 21 July 1403. In which play does Shakespeare chronicle this event?

3 Shakespeare’s eldest daughter

married John Hall, a doctor. She died in July 1649, aged 66. What was her name?

4 In July 2006, a copy of which book

was sold at Sotheby’s auction house for £2.5 million?

5From which play does this quote

come? “He makes a July's day short as December...”

Answers: 1) The Soothsayer. 2) Henry IV, Part 1. 3) Susanna. 4) The First Folio. 5) The Winter’s Tale.

Try as we might, we couldn't stretch an entire quiz out of the two references to football in Shakespeare's works. So this month's theme is the month of July...

L ast time, we visited the Blackfriars Gatehouse. But that’s just one connection

Shakespeare had in the Blackfriars area, so let’s go and see our next lost building.

!e narrow alleyway running down the side of the Cockpit is Ireland Yard. Halfway down, you will come to the ruins of a churchyard on your right. !e yard is at a raised level from the ground so walk up the steps, keeping your eye on the old stone ruins on your right. !is is all that remains of the church within the monastery.

!ere were approximately 400 friars here between the 1200s and 1538, when it fell victim to the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. It was in the Great Hall of the Blackfriars that Henry held a court hearing to test the validity of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1529. As we know, Henry got his divorce, married Anne Boleyn, and all the religious houses fell one by one.

Parts of the Blackfriars were sold

o" piecemeal. !at’s how we have Shakespeare buying the gatehouse in 1613 and his theatre company, the King’s Men, opening an indoor playhouse in the dining hall. !is posh new theatre attracted a higher class of clientele than the raucous Globe, and the company could charge a higher entrance fee.

!ey began to experiment with di"erent music, using softer instruments such as the lute and the #ute. !is is where Shakespeare’s $nal plays were performed – !e Tempest, !e Winter’s Tale, Pericles, and Cymbeline. And by poignant

coincidence the play Henry VIII was also performed, re-enacting the tense events of Henry and Catherine of Aragon’s divorce hearing which had taken place here 80 years previously.

As you come back down the steps, turn right and walk to the end of Ireland Yard. Look up at the street sign which recalls a lost era. It says simply: Playhouse Yard.

So that brings us to the end of our mini-tour. But if your feet are itching and you’re ready to discover further lost Shakespearean sites in the City, join us next time for some more suggestions.

Walking with ShakespeareOur City of London Tour Guide Zoe Bramley reports from the Shakespeare Trail.

!e Shakespeare Magazine Quiz

Regulars!

SHAKESPEARE magazine! 45

Shadowing Shakespeare: Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (painted by Holbein).

Meet thy makers...

Zoe Bramley is a City of London Tour Guide specialising in Shakespeare’s London and the Tudor City. She qualified in 2010

and then launched the Shakespeare Trail, a guided walk which explores the hidden sites associated with our greatest playwright. Zoe’s fascination with Shakespeare began after reading

A Midsummer Night’s Dream aged 17 and wishing she could meet Bottom!

Zoe can be contacted via www.shakespearetrail.com

Mary Finch is in her fourth year studying English at Messiah College

in central Pennsylvania. Will first grabbed her attention in secondary school and hasn’t let go since – she

reads, recites and watches Shakespeare whenever possible. Besides going

on irrational adventures to see performances with her friend Alison,

Mary also has a passion for swing dancing, dabbling in calligraphy and tending to her ever-growing window

garden of succulents.

Livia Lakomy is a Brazilian journalist and writer. Although

Portuguese is her mother tongue, she spent much of her teens trying to

make sense of Shakespeare’s English and singing along to Bob Dylan. She lives in New York, where she is earning an MFA in Nonfiction

Writing from Columbia University. Her current projects involve essays

on Brazil’s emotional history and translating writers from her

hometown of Curitiba into English.

Helen Mears teaches English Literature, Film and Media Studies at a Further Education college in

Ipswich. She has loved Shakespeare since her schooldays and at weekends

can be found volunteering at the Globe or the Sam Wanamaker

Playhouse. She is currently studying for an MA in the Advanced Teaching of Shakespeare. She is at her happiest

when watching Shakespeare, exploring castles and monastic ruins,

or listening to Fall Out Boy.

Christopher Tomkinson is an actor, director, writer and arts educator. For the last few years he’s worked

most regularly with Sport for Jove, a Sydney-based theatre company with a special focus on Shakespeare and a tendency to run things in repertory. He wrote about their season of All’s Well That Ends Well and Twelfth

Night in our previous issue.

Just some of the contributors to this issue of Shakespeare Magazine

!Contributors


Piper Williams is a freelance fashion and portrait photographer

from Portland, Oregon, now working out of Surrey. He spends

his days time-travelling via historical docudramas, silent films and vintage radio broadcasts. These adventures

are a catalyst for his imagery and his wardrobe. His current project, 1928, is a modern take on the Jazz and War age aesthetic. Also in the works is a Steam, Diesel and Cosplay-inspired series of Shakespearean characters.

Next issue


We hope you’ve enjoyed Issue Three of Shakespeare Magazine. We’ll be back next month, and here’s just some of the

Shakespearean gems we’ll be bringing you.

!e Bard in the BalkansHamlet came to Kosovo. We were there.

!“My kingdom for a... jeep!”McKellen talks Richard III in this classic archive interview.

!Look, Mum – no roof!Open-air Shakespeare this summer.

!United States of ShakespeareHow America learned to love the Bard.

!

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At last! A magazine with all the Will in the world

Celebrating450 years of the English language’s

greatest-ever wordsmith

Launch issue


SHAKESPEARE

King DavidFrom Doctor Who to Hamlet and Richard II, David Tennant is a 21st century Shakespeare superstar!

Blood meets ink in the world of Shakespeare Tattoos

Aussie Rules Shakespeare!A double bill of the Bard in sunny Sydney

Character'd on thy skin..." "

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