This year of course has marked the 406th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and the bunting has certainly been up in our house. During those four hundred years there have been countless productions of his plays and in this treatise I explore several of the most innovative and/or controversial ones.
There is an old adage in the world of entertainment that one should never work with children, animals or Walter Matthau. The list has since been extended to include anyone called Clyde who insists on bringing their own egg salad to rehearsals. The warning of including theatrical animals was never more true than David Garrick’s 1747 production of ‘A Winter’s Tale’. The theatrical entrepreneur decided that it would be an interesting concept if instead of simply having a bear pursue Antigonus off stage, all the cast be bears. He wrangled two dozen of the beasts from various different baiters and enthusiasts across the country.
Opening night was, at best, a mixed success. Reviews – or autopsies as they should technically be called were hit and miss. ‘A triumph in ursine stupidity. Rather than ‘bear baiting’, this was ‘bear-sating’ as the apex predators fuelled by a primeval rage and dislike of iambic pentameter gorged themselves full of human flesh’ – is what Fortinbrass Makepeace of ‘The Daily Courant’ called it. Henry Woodfall of the ‘Public Advertiser’ declared ‘I was lucky to escape – there were many who didn’t and went the Way of Antigonus’. Clint Duvain of ‘Lloyd’s News’ simply stated ‘Mon Dieu! The blood!’
Other animal-based fiascos include Fanny Kemble in the female title role of an 1829 production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Covent Garden where the role of Tybalt was played by a duck. It worked well until the death of Mercutio where the duck would sit on the corpse until someone brought it worms.
Over the years, sensibilities have changed and censorship has had a big impact on the way that Shakespeare’s plays have been produced. This goes all the way back to when the Bard was still alive. Having a preternatural fear of the occult, King James I insisted that in early productions of ‘Macbeth’ the witches should be replaced by quantity surveyors. This is why Act 4 Scene 1 starts with essentially a list of ingredients that the ‘witches’ read off a clipboard.
In Sir Henry Irving’s 1863 production of ‘King Lear’, the role of Goneril was replaced with a character called ‘Janet’ as it was felt that Goneril’s name was too close to a venereal disease for Victorian sensibilities.
Sir Laurence Oliver famously for Trevor Nunn’s radical production of Julius Caesar had the phrase ‘Gooner for Life’ tattooed across his chest as a retort to the FA’s strict laws on advertising, so that when he was stabbed in the forum, his true allegiance was revealed.
At the height of Stalin’s narcissistic-driven paranoia, the Moscow State Theatre Company was only allowed to perform ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ if instead of a donkey’s head, the actor playing Bottom donned a large papier-mâché effigy of Trotsky’s head. The Second Act also had to end with a recitation of the statistics for the Murmansk grain harvest from the year 1937.
Theatrical visionaries have tried to adapt Shakespeare’s plays to different mediums – some with more success than others. Jacques Cousteau’s underwater ‘Hamlet’ was a commercial flop when during previews people would shout ‘I can see bubbles!’ as they emerged from Laertes’ snorkel when he was supposed to be dead.
‘Hamlet on Ice’ was cancelled after one of its stars, Nancy Kerrigan, bravely cast as Polonius, suffered a PTSD breakdown when stabbed through the arras, and it took five strong men half an hour to prise her off the rink.
‘The Duke of Disco’, the ill-fated John Travolta vehicle based on ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and the disco hits of the band ‘Lipps Inc.’ landed in cinemas back in October ’79, and had slunk off out again before Halloween. In the pivotal court scene, the Duke of Venice declares that instead of the rhetorical stylings of the prosecution and defence teams, there should be a dance-off, and the disguised Portia and Shylock go head to head in flared white suits to the tune of ‘Funkytown’.
Curious casting decisions have led to revolutionary interpretations of the texts.
Julia Taymor’s 1998 production of ‘Titus Andronicus’ on Broadway starring Sesame Street’s Elmo was described by The New York Times theatre critic, Peter Marks, as “brave”. And that audiences “wept openly” at the sight of Oscar the Grouch’s dismemberment as Lavinia. Snuffleupagus’s Tamora was less well received being summed up by Sigourney Weaver as “whatever the mammoth equivalent of ‘ham’ is”. In fact, in Tarantino’s later film adaptation of the production, Snuffleupagus was replaced by ‘The Count’ whose performance was described by Roger Ebert as ‘chilling’.
Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball’s production of ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ proved a smash hit in Blackpool in 1987 with Cleopatra’s death scene being described as ‘comedy gold’ and ‘Tommy Cannon firing on all cylinders’.
In Orson Welles’ portentous production of ‘Macbeth’, the eccentric genius had made the questionable decision of casting the Three Stooges in the role of the witches. It received mixed reviews on Broadway when the opening scene took half an hour to complete with a protracted slapstick routine involving Moe getting his head stuck in the cauldron. The film studios wouldn’t touch ‘The Stooges’ with a bargepole at the time, with Louis B. Mayer describing them as ‘toxic guff’, and Welles was forced to drop the comedians and replace them with straight actors. Welles never trusted the studios again, and it wasn’t until ‘The Muppet Movie’ twenty years later that he went in front of a camera again playing the role of ‘Hollywood Producer’ and the ‘Swedish Chef’.
Some of the most fascinating productions have been linked to simple misunderstandings or misinterpretations. The mishearing of the line in Henry V as ‘Once more unto the beach dear friends’, led the English and French armies dressed in bathing suits and carrying buckets and spades in an amateur production in Wolverhampton back in 1957. Henry V eventually is crowned with a ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hat and enthroned on a stripy deck chair.
The 1982 Milanese productions of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ set in Hitler’s bunker in 1945 lacked the lovelorn whimsy of a more mainstream production. Italian theatre critic, Paulo Verreni, said Hero being portrayed as Goebbels was ‘a misjudgement akin to making a horse, Pope’.
Of course, sometimes it is the vanity of actors that can hamper a production. In an RSC adaptation of ‘Troilus and Cressida’, Sir John Gielgud insisted on playing every single role (except for Nestor which he declared as being ‘beneath him and the common dignity of mankind’). He spent the entire production swapping hats and turning 180° after each character spoke. ‘It was more akin to a Tommy Cooper sketch rather than the required gravitas of a timeless love story’ said Marjorie Bandicoot of The Times, and ‘Gielgud has made an arse of himself’. Shortly after he took the role of Hobson in ‘Arthur’ winning himself an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
Finally, Shakespeare is inspiring great artists, theatre and film directors to this very day. James Cameron has dropped several very heavy hints that the third part in his Avatar vanity project will see his blue-hued inhabitants of Pandora significantly borrow from the plot of ‘Twelfth Night’ with Sam Worthington’s character spending the majority of the film in cross-gartered yellow stockings which are particularly terrifying in glorious 3D.
Treatises of Gloria 