Being Shakespeare
Written by Jonathan Bate
Directed by Tom Cairns
Broadway Playhouse, 175 W. Chestnut (map)
thru April 29 | tickets: $45-$74 | more info
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With Callow’s formidable talents, this could be so much more
ATG, Act Productions Ltd, Robert G. Bartner and Norman Tulchin present:
Being Shakespeare
Review by Catey Sullivan
In writer Jonathan Bate’s Being Shakespeare, we get an odd hybrid of historical fiction, lecture and dramatic monolog. The dominant form here is lecture, with the noted Shakespearean actor Simon Callow interspersing biographical data with engaging (but not revelatory) readings from Shakespeare’s plays. If you’re a newcomer to Shakespeare, Being Shakespeare offers a fine introduction to the life and writing of the greatest English playwright to emerge from the last Millennium (and perhaps the current one as well.) But disappointingly, the piece offers little more than an introduction to the life, times and words of the Bard. It’s a rich introduction to be sure, but as far as the nuts-and-bolts facts go, Being Shakespeare doesn’t contain anything you won’t find perusing any number of biographies of the playwright
Callow ‘s monologue/lecture is framed by the “Seven Ages of Man” speech from As You Like It (All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players/They have their exits and entrances/,
And one man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages… ) , tracing Shakespeare’s life from infant to whining schoolboy to lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and finally, second childishness.
He starts strong, incorporating Marc Antony’s burial speech from Julius Caesar with an urgent vigor and emotion that sets the stage veritably crackling. He also does fine work with The Winter’s Tale, delectably depicting the wide-eyed wonder and mischievousness of the child Mamllius unspooling a tale of hobgoblins and sprites to his doting mother. But many of the other passages don’t resound with the same drama and clarity. It’s lovely to hear passages from King John or Coriolanus from the lips of a Shakespearean master, but they lack the mesmerizing urgency that resonates through the speech from Caesar.
That said, Callow does a memorable job with several of Shakespeare’s comic creations, imbuing the rollicking Falstaff with a bumptiousness and a cheeriness that makes his ultimate rejection all the more wrenching. In an extended segment from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he delivers the amateur theatricals of the rude mechanicals with an earnestness that’s quite funny.
Bate’s script does an admirable job making the Seven Ages fit Shakespeare’s life even when they don’t fit the Elizabethan himself. Shakespeare was never a soldier, for example. When the soldier’s age arises , we get a vivid portrait of an England constantly at war and the admission that Shakespeare never knew his country to be at peace during his lifetime. Woven through the explanation of the era’s far-reaching military complex are passages from the all but endless procession of fighters in Shakespeare’s plays. The lover fits far more naturally into things, with a reading from “Venus and Adonis” virtually dripping with a sensuality that’s both lavishly explicit in its exploration of the drive that makes the beast with two backs.
Tom Cairns’s direction keeps Callow’s performance understated, as it should be. This is an actor who can convey more with the slight twitch of an eyebrow than most people can convey by shouting at the top of their lungs. Callow doesn’t need to do much to convey much – less is definitely more in his quicksilver delivery.
Given the caliber of that performance, Being Shakespeare is all the more frustrating – you sense that it could be so much more with the formidable talents of Callow in play.
Rating: ★★
Being Shakespeare continues through April 29th at Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut (map). Tickets are $45-$74, and are available by phone (312-595-5600) or online at TicketMaster.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at ChicagoShakes.com. (Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes, includes intermission)