The settling-in period has begun…the students are figuring out who they’re related to in the play, and…EEEK!  “I’m a suitor to her?!?  What the heck is a suitor?  What on earth did I sign up for?!?!”  Seriously, though, they are all very excited to figure out the new relationships, especially now that I have finished and distributed the scripts.

Last year, I was merciless about girls playing guys…I really had very little choice in the matter as it was imperative (to me) that Dogberry, Verges, and the Watch be men.  In keeping the production as traditional as I could, I did not feel comfortable swapping out guy roles and making them into female characters.  That could also probably have something to do with the fact that I can’t picture anyone but Michael Keaton being Dogberry after his wonderful performance in Branagh’s Much Ado!  Hilarious!  But besides my own personal likes/dislikes/opinions, there was the simple fact that I was doing something I had never done before - directing a play.  It was completely out of my comfort zone to do this in the first place, and the thought of switching character genders never even crossed my mind.  I just wanted to present Shakespeare in a positive light to my students, their families, and our audience, so I didn’t tamper with the text very much!

This year, though, I know my girls just want to be girls…They don’t want to have to wear grungy pants, sport unibrows and beards, and try to walk as masculine as possible.  They want to wear the pretty dresses the other actresses got to wear last year…and can I really blame them for that?  Of course not…I would be right there with them, wanting the gorgeous feminine costumes that our designer created, as opposed to orange pants, brown shirts, and burlap vests!  So I have done some “gender-modification” with this year’s cast (and I’m not even a licensed doctor!).  I have Baptista, played by my Dogberry from last year, as the overwrought mother of Bianca and Katharina, trying desperately to find a husband for her eldest (sounds vaguely reminiscent of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice!).  Two of Petruchio’s household servants will be played by girls and will actually be girls - Isabella and Celia (instead of Nathaniel and Curtis).  I also have the Lord who plays the trick on Christopher Sly as a Lady, out for a hunt with her friend (also a girl).

It will be interesting and fun to see what people’s reactions are to these changes.  I know there are purists out there who may think I’m somehow tampering with a sacred formula for “doing” Shakespeare (some might even be in the cast), but hopefully people will realize that this is not a professional theatre troupe - these are junior high and high school kids who are gradually gaining an appreciation for Shakespeare (not to mention a certain amount of trust in me to keep things fun - this is, after all, their summer vacation they’re dedicating to this project).  If making Baptista a woman helps someone enjoy her summer more, then hey!  I see no problem with that.  Do I agree with professional troupes that are trying to make a point by making all of the characters women (or dogs, or Martians, or whatever)?  Well, it wouldn’t be my first choice of how to do a play, but then, I don’t have to buy tickets to it either.  My point here is that gender-swapping for the sake of saying, “Let’s see what we can do that’s different than everyone else!” is not necessarily my idea of how to use the text.  But for the sake of helping kids enjoy theater more?  I’m all for it…unless, of course, they ask to all be Martians…I’ve got to draw a line somewhere!

When Kenneth Branagh filmed his unedited Hamlet in 1996, it elicited a variety of responses. Some carped about the sheer length of the film (four hours plus), while others questioned the integrity of the text (e.g. which versions are we using/combining to create this “complete” Hamlet?). Regardless of your level of appreciation of the film, it does test the level of Bard fanaticism. By this logic, if you love Shakespeare’s words, the more of them there are, the happier you will be.

The Royal Shakespeare Company in England is taking this idea to the ultimate limit. They are producing no less than eight of The Bard’s plays as a history cycle: Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V, Henry VI Parts I, II and III, and Richard III. Though not written in this order, this sequence represents a chronological presentation of the plays. Shakespeare’s other two histories, King John and Henry VIII, do not feature any of the overlapping characters and story threads that the other eight do, which presumably explains their absence from this presentation. All told, this reportorial approach took nearly three years to prepare and would demand about twenty-four hours of the audience’s time to view in its entirety.

This is a bold undertaking in a number of ways. First, it demands the consistency of a single, extended play, even though the works were not written that way. Secondly, the histories are generally less popular than the tragedies and comedies, with Henry V and Richard III getting most of the face time. If it succeeds, the RSC’s cycle will be nothing short of…uh…historical.

A recent article on Shakespearean hyphenate Kenneth Branagh mentioned that most of the writer-director-actor’s best known pieces involve a person who is not what they first seem (see the reincarnation thriller Dead Again or his pompous turn as Harry Potter’s less-than-brave teacher as examples). In the interview, Branagh acknowledges this idea as the most important in Shakespeare’s work. In essence, characters in The Bard’s plays are liars, and much of the plots of these stories involve people freeing themselves from the problems generated by their own lies.

The idea certainly works for Hamlet (one of the plays Branagh adapted to the screen) in which all the characters lie to each other. Claudius pretends to be a grieving brother when really he is an opportunistic murderer. Hamlet might be pretending to be crazy in order to get the dirt on his uncle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern pretend to be Hamlet’s friends….and feign intelligence to boot. It seems like a perfect fit, and it’s an idea that certainly has specific application to Shakespeare. In the larger sense, however, isn’t every story about this idea? If everybody was who we thought they were at the beginning of a story, why would anybody watch or read what follows? All good stories are built on character change, and the events of a well-told tale force characters to evolve and reveal different sides of themselves. Shakespeare certainly maximized the idea through stories of duplicitousness, but he was neither the first nor the last to do so.

Before Branagh took up the mantle of Shakespearean film interpreter, there was Sir Laurence Olivier. Branagh owes a great debt to Olivier, and adapted some of the same Shakespearean plays into films. This year marks the centenary of Olivier’s birth, so there have been tributes aplenty—and with good reason. Some of Olivier’s most impressive achievements (in a career that had many) were his Shakespearean films: his seminal Richard III (1955); the buoyantly theatrical Henry V (1945); the blackface Othello (1965, not long before this kind of performance would no longer be considered appropriate); and, of course, his best known Shakespearean film, the Oscar-winning Hamlet (1948).

Olivier stood tall among contemporary Shakespearean actors (and sometimes directors) such as John Gielgud and Richard Burton. In many ways, Olivier represented the ideal balance between the extremes embodied by the other two. Gielgud was the consummate poet, with graceful movements and a mellifluous, resonant voice. Burton was Gielgud’s opposite—gruff and animalistic, with a larger-than-life personality. Olivier in his Hamlet found both the elegance and the turmoil in the character. His decidedly Freudian take on the material may have helped him give both qualities equal attention. His monologues were pure poetry while his scenes with other characters, particularly Jean Simmons’s tremulous Ophelia, were passionate and visceral. Olivier brought this duality to many great performances. Even late in his career, when he was consigned to the role of Zeus in the ultra-cheesy Clash of the Titans, Laurence Olivier remained a class act.
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For those critics who found Kenneth Branagh’s every-word-is-sacred version of Hamlet to be a bit top heavy, a new Bard production will prove even more challenging. In a bold theatrical effort, the company in question is producing all of Shakespeare’s histories as a complete cycle. This marathon of storytelling is something of a mini-trend, with some companies presenting the plays in the order they were written while others place them in chronological order (according to history).

While the approach to such productions are undoubtedly epic with a capital E, I’m not sure what other purpose the conceit serves. As in Harry Potter and even The Lord of the Rings, such an epic treatment can be both a success and a hindrance. In such a vast (and some might say overblown) landscape, the small moments and nuances might get lost. In other words, in their desire to bring out all that is held sacred by fans of a given work or works, artists can potentially drown their audiences in significance. Shakespeare’s works are already writ large, and I don’t know that piling them on top of each other will make them anything other than, well, bigger.