Well no WONDER As You Like It was so depressing

From The Daily Mail on the Sam Mendes/Kate Winslet split:

A source close to Mendes explained the break-up by saying: 'He became bored working on his latest theatrical project, and he took that boredom home with him. And that led to the spark being taken out of their marriage.'

The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance

The Tempest is my favorite Shakespeare play. It’s the play that made me fall in love with Shakespeare, which means it’s right up there with all the other things that made me fall in love: Seven Samurai (Japanese movies), Sasha and Digweed’s Communication (techno), Maverick, Cheyenne and Sugarfoot (westerns), Myrna Loy (Myrna Loy) and Sheila Tagrin (girls). It's also the play I directed, in the dark backward and abysm of time, when I was a senior in high school. As I have so often had occasion to remark these days, boy, do I have a great future behind me.

I know the script of this play the way I know a Beatles song -- I may not be able to recite all the words on my own, but I will be word perfect once the song starts playing. Which is why it’s impossible for me not to be annoyed when Argiers becomes Algiers, the still-vexed Bermoothes turn into the still-vexed Bermudas, the line “Oh what a blow was there given!” is missing its punchline (“An it had not fallen flatlong.”) and my favorite WTF line in all of Shakespeare, “And most chirurgeonly,” is nowhere to be found. This is also why it’s impossible for me to be objective about this play, so what follows is not so much a review as a collection of thoughts about the experience of this particular production.

First thought: nice opening. The play begins with a shipwreck scene, but the production begins with Prospero, who’s sitting stage left reading a book from the moment the house opens. It's a great conceit: here's somebody with his head in a book all the time; no wonder he lost his dukedom. And that was 12 years ago. Guy hasn't changed a bit. Only when he’s ready does he don his magic robe, put on his belt of power (shades of Wonder Woman and her magic belt), take up his staff, and conjure up the storm which will cause that opening shipwreck scene. At which point we’re reminded that Sam Mendes is directing this play, since the shipwreck scene is marred by the same annoying effect that marred last year’s Winter’s Tale: any time there’s an aside, the actors all freeze, the stage goes dark, and a spotlight hits the commenting actor. Then the action starts up again, only to stop with the next comment; and then it begins yet again only to grind to a halt with the next aside. It’s so jerky and frustrating that it’s impossible not to believe that the single most formative experience of Sam Mendes’ life is his struggle to drive stick.


The next, oh, 20 minutes is the longest single exposition scene in Shakespeare. The story is, he wrote it to win a bet with Ben Jonson, who kept making fun of the fact that Shakespeare never stuck to the Aristotelian unities of place and time.

JONSON: If you wrote the Agamemnon, you would have staged everything from Aulis to the Trojan Horse before getting to the homecoming. You and your mouldy tales. You put Father Time in Winter’s Tale, and Pericles takes place over what, twenty years? Man, you couldn’t do single set and real time if your life depended on it.
SHAKESPEARE: Oh yeah? Here; read this. It’s called The Tempest.
JONSON: Oh my God! The second scene is nothing but exposition! And not even interesting exposition.
SHAKESPEARE: Yeah. See how boring single set and real time are?

And that’s the challenge when doing this play: how to sugar the long Prospero speeches so that they don’t put everybody to sleep. (And it’s not like Shakespeare is unaware of what he’s doing, either; Miranda’s line “Your tale, sir, would cure deafness,” could be spoken by anybody in the audience.) So what does Mendes have Prospero do? Blindfold his daughter so that, in effect, he is just a disembodied voice, and then rattle on while she sits there like a prisoner waiting for the firing squad to arrive. I’m still trying to figure out the whole blindfolding motif, and it is a motif -- Prospero covers Miranda’s eyes a couple of times in this production, like he’s protecting her from something. But what? I can understand covering her eyes when Caliban shows up, but when you’re giving the premise?

PROSPERO: I’ve led a rather interesting life; would you like to hear about it? Good; let me blindfold you.
MIRANDA: Whatever, Dad.

All I can think of is that it's about two things: his magic, and the fact that this particular Prospero has no idea how to deal with real people. As far as the magic goes, I can buy that Prospero creates the shipwreck. But if you’re going to set him up as somebody who can control not just the winds but the other characters on stage, if you're going to make the man a puppeteer, then you have to be very precise about (a) who the puppets are, (b) when and if they can ever act on their own, and (c) why the puppeteer is manipulating them. That clarity is missing here. Lenane’s Prospero appears to be manipulating everybody, including the bad guys. I mean, Antonio and Sebastian are natural plotters; it’s only natural for Prospero to use his arts to make sure their plotting fails. What is not natural is for Ariel to hand both of them daggers so they can attempt to commit murders which will then be prevented. It’s beautifully staged; Ariel walks past them and the daggers he hands them look like they have always been in their hands. But it’s troublesome when you think of the puppeteer angle. It’s one thing to say, “I know you will try to commit murder, but I am going to prevent you,” and quite another to say, “Here’s a couple of daggers so you can try to commit murder so I can prevent you.” It makes the game look rigged from the start. I mean, if Prospero can control everybody to this extent, then you’re watching an argument against the existence of free will, not a play. Or an argument about an all-powerful figure who makes people commit sins so that he can indulge himself in not just preventing them but in forgiving the sinners. After, y'know, an appropriate amount of spiritual torture. I don't know about you, but to me this is both dramatically and theologically unsound.

I used to do the "You are three men of sin" speech as an audition piece,

so don't get me started on this guy's Ariel.

It’s also untrue of this production, which is about vengeance and forgiveness. Almost everyone who’s not being tested or manipulated in a center ring of sand sits on chairs in an upstage pool of water and waits their turn to go onstage, staring off into space while they wonder if the Equity healthcare plan covers the kind of pruney foot rot that infected half the grunts in ‘Nam. The constant presence of actors waiting to go on gives the impression that Mendes is staging a Brechtian exercise in presentational ethics, where everything has a pointed moral and everyone has a lesson to learn. Especially Prospero. Judging the production backwards, the naturalism of Stephen Dillane’s underplaying, once the opportunity to forgive has been presented to his character, stands in stark relief to the shouting hand-waving over-emphasizing hammyness of his early scenes. I kept asking myself “Why is he over-acting like this?” and of course, by the end of the play I understood exactly why: to make a contrast between Prospero the avenger and Prospero the forgiver. The problem I had with it is that shouting is a technique, not a character revelation. When he's observing -- like Jacques -- Dillane's Prospero is in his element, speaking naturally and pointedly. But when he's talking to other people, he's a completely different person, and unfortunately it looks like he's a completely different actor as well. It's a valid and fascinating choice to make Prospero the socially inept twin brother of Jacques, but I feel like I'm making an after-the-fact excuse by thinking of Dillane's performance this way, because while watching it, I didn't know what to make of it. It's like he was playing an acting version of vengeance versus forgiveness: the rarer action is in underplaying than in hamming it up.

But like I say, it’s impossible for me to be objective about this play. Or to see it fresh, for that matter. Even the moment that made people gasp -- Caliban’s first entrance -- reminded me of the same entrance, done in exactly the same way, from the 1974 Public Theatre Tempest with Sam Waterston as Prospero, Carol Kane as Miranda, and Randy Duk Kim as the best Trinculo I have ever seen. (And God, what a weird production THAT was.)

But I will say this. If everything Dillane did as an actor was designed to make his delivery of the epilogue poignant, simple, and profound, then he totally succeeded.

Homeless man helps color-coordinated ingenues find true love.

Welcome to the Green Gray World

There's actually more color in this picture than there is in the set.

If you were to ask me for a two-sentence review of The Bridge Project's As You Like It at BAM, then I would tell you to prepare to hear the words "There is no reason on earth for a fucking water-boarding scene to be within five miles of this comedy." Which brilliantly sets up the second sentence: "But of course, we are not watching a comedy, and Sam Mendes is not about to let us forget it."


So what are we watching? A production in which scene changes are done to sad violin music and the mournful notes in the script have become the entire symphony. A lot of acting that feels slight instead of light. And a play in which the city and the country are about as different as two cubicles in the same dreary office. This is supposed to be a comedy about contrasting worlds, and while there's a valid point in answering a cheery cry of "Let's run away to the forest!" with the harsh reality of "Fine, but how we will live there?" the only contrast here is between "stark and cold" and "slightly less stark and a tad bit warmer." And yes, the word "desert" is spoken as much in the first two acts of As You Like It as it is in all of Lawrence of Arabia, but that does not mean you bring camels into Arden. (I exaggerate; there are no camels in this production, mostly because camels are not colorless.)

Jacques in Oklahoma.

Which is not to say that you can't infuse a Shakespearean comedy with languid melancholy; the Watteau-inspired Much Ado with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack did it brilliantly, mostly by showing how foreign Benedick and Beatrice were to the general mood around them. The only foreigner in this production is Stephen Dillane's chipper, low-key (and occasionally inaudible) Jacques; and the fact that I can, without any irony at all, use the word "chipper" to describe a character the script keeps calling "melancholy" pretty much nails how low the Glum Bar has been set in this production.


As for the Fun Bar, the evening has its moments, but they are just that: moments -- like flashes of sunlight in a forest, they illuminate but do not warm. Because the production feels heavy and weightless at the same time, there's a flatness to everything, which makes the jokes stick out like muffins on a baking pan. As for the acting, the supporting characters generally fare better than the leads. This is that rare production of As You Like It in which Celia is more lively than Rosalinde, Phoebe feels more intriguing than Jacques, and Silvius gets as many laughs as Touchstone.


This is also that rare production in which, instead of the usual question everyone asks about the play ("What in the name of God does Rosalinde see in Orlando anyway?") you find yourself saying "What does Orlando see in this girl again?" Juliet Rylance, looking for all the world like Geneva Carr crossed with Ellen Degeneres, spends so much time dashing back and forth onstage that it's a comment on the way she's playing Rosalinde: she never really inhabits the part, she just keeps approaching and retreating, approaching and retreating. And Christian Carmago's Orlando has pretty much one look, one tone of voice, and one manner throughout. Can't wait to see his Ariel. (Note to director: if you are crazy enough to have Orlando kiss Rosalinde while she's pretending to be a guy, then the characters have to actually deal with the moment for like, y'know, a moment, okay?) (Better yet: don't have them kiss in the first place.)

It occurs to me as I'm writing this that there's a hint of Beckett to this production, like Mendes decided to direct Waiting For Rosalinde. But that's probably just me. For instance: I can't see a guy in a bowler hat without thinking of either Beckett, Magritte, or Lena Olin in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. They get all mixed up in my mind. Just like a bunch of things seemed to have gotten mixed up in Sam Mendes' mind. It's obvious that a certain amount of thought has been brought to the script, and a certain amount of thought to the interpretation, but they're neither compatible nor consistent. Unless I'm missing something, there's not one single prism that you can look through to see this As You Like It whole. Instead, you wind up looking at everything through a pair of blurry bifocals.

So no, can't say I liked it much, though it had its moments. Silly me. I went to BAM expecting to see a comedy about love. Word to the wise: don't make my mistake. Go to BAM expecting to see Measure for Measure, and I bet you walk out pleasantly surprised. Because this is not a comedy about love. It's not a comedy about anything. And Sam Mendes is not about to let you forget it. (And technically it's not a water-boarding either, it's just a guy shoving another guy's head into a bucket of water until he starts to drown, and then yanking his head out. And then doing it all over again. To which I can only say: in As You Like It? Really??? WTF, Sam?)

Forest? Forest?!? This isn't a "forest"!

Now that's a forest!

Five reasons why the New York Times will rave about Winter’s Tale

1. Rebecca Hall. She’s pretty, she’s talented, she has a great voice, she’s British theatre royalty, and I cannot stand her. I didn’t like her Rosalinde in As You Like It, and she does the same things in this that bugged me then: treats the verse like, uhm, prose, so that a simple line like “I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until/ You have drawn oaths from him not to stay.” becomes “I had [let me think of what I did now] thought, [what do I call him again?] sir, to have [how to describe it?] held my [sing the vowel, girl] peace until [touch my pregnant belly because I’m talking to the father of my child] you have [pretend there’s a set of parentheses around the next two words] drawn oaths from him [make the next word two syllables long] not to [make the next word two syllables long] stay.” There are people who love this kind of acting. Ben Brantley is one of them. (I can’t wait to see his review of her Hedda Gabler. Which I will only go to see because Hedda kills herself at the end, and I’ll be rooting for that to happen from the opening line.)

2 It’s a very thoughtful production. Critics love it when plays tell us what to think. It brings them back to those college papers they had to write about how the light at the end of the dock symbolizes hope in The Great Gatsby. It says Director’s Message in big bold letters. In this production of Winter’s Tale, the message is “Isn’t Jealousy awful?” Something we can all agree on, right? Yes, but. And the But is, the play is not written to make you stop and think. It starts with blind jealousy that hits the road at 60MPH and accelerates from there. It doesn’t pause at every rest stop to consider what it’s doing, because it’s blind jealousy, not sighted jealousy. And if you don’t floor the gas pedal and never let up until you run out of gas, then the audience will start wondering why you didn’t take that exit marked “Hey stupid -– if your wife supposedly slept with your best friend, when were they ever alone together? And why isn’t your idiot wife asking this question, huh?” So instead of getting caught up in the moment, we are asked to reflect upon the moment, which brings us to the biggest reason why this will get raves:

3. It’s a very British production. Meaning distanced, meaning polite, meaning cool and un-sweaty –- meaning, in a very real sense, that it’s all about the acting. On one level this play is a fairy tale, not a drawing room piece. But drawing room is what Sam Mendes knows and does, and that’s what we get here: private moments of suffering, instead of hyper-realized moments of passion. Moments like Simon Russell Beale’s Leontes walking around barefoot or dressed in rags to SHOW that he’s suffering, to SHOW that he feels like the victim. All his soliloquies done with special lighting, (spotlight on Beale, darkness on the rest of the stage) no matter whether they’re forty lines long or four words long. Which just throws another level of distance at the audience, because it takes you out of the character’s actions and focuses you on the actor. But that’s what the Brits do. It’s not about disappearing into the part, it’s about playing the part, it’s about saying “Simon Russell Beale’s Leontes” instead of “Leontes,” it’s about seeing how the engine works instead of feeling how the car rides, it’s about appreciating what the actor does instead of getting caught up in what the character is doing -- which is why Meryl Streep is the most British actress we have in this country.

4. Ethan Hawke as Autolycus steals the show. He doesn’t, really –- he comes very close -- but you’ll still hear the phrase “steals the show” because (a) he plays a thief; (b) his performance jump starts the second act; and (c) he’s getting laughs, which (because everything is so fucking polite) are few and far between here. He doesn’t get as many laughs as he could, which may change by the end of the run –- there are bits of business that could have been done better, and probably will be in time –- but he’s like a breath of fresh air after all the “look at me acting” in the first half of the play. Plus he plays the part like a cross between Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, which is just as delightful as it sounds.

5. "It is required you do awake your faith." The last scene of this play is total fantasy, it comes out of nowhere, it makes no logical sense at all, and no matter who’s doing it or how poorly it’s done, I always bawl like a baby whenever I see it, just the way I always laugh like a hyena whenever I see the Pyramus and Thisbe part of Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is where the play gets quiet for real, which in a production filled with quiet moments is like hearing a twentieth whisper in a row instead of a single whisper after nineteen shouts. No matter; it still works, which makes me forgive a lot. Especially the last moment, which highlights the fact that Leontes and Hermione never exchange a single word (she has only one speech, and that for her long-lost daughter), and if that final stage picture makes me think of the fabulous ending of Trevor Nunn’s fabulous All’s Well, then that, too, pardons much. Which, in a play about forgiveness, is as it should be.

Translations: part 1 of 2

Translation is cultural kidnapping –- cultural because the act of turning a foreign word into a domestic word is like painting, with shades and colors and contrasts, and every language has its own palette; and kidnapping because the bad ones always end with the victim’s escape from your clutches, while the good ones always end in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome marriage. Even the best translation can’t help but substitute a value for every word, what Noam Chomsky would probably call the myth behind the language. Which is why, in much the same way that every Hollywood movie about Ancient Rome becomes a replay of the American myth -- the war of freedom and democracy against tyranny and dictatorship -- every British translation of Chekhov is about the English character: class snobbery and repressed emotions.

(And it's not just Chekhov. Check out Night Creatures, the Hammer version of the Dr Syn story starring Peter Cushing, and compare it to Disney's Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. In Night Creatures, the Robin Hood figure is an ex-pirate who must pay for his past sins with his life. In Scarecrow, the Robin Hood figure is anti-tyranny ["There's a new spirit in the world, Mipps. Men can't beat armies. But ideas can."] and risks his neck to save a proto-Son-Of-Liberty from the gallows. Or to put it another way -- in England: repressed emotions; in America: a secret identity.)

And in Chekhov? It depends on the translation. There's a lot of repressed emotion and blindness in Tom Stoppard’s new Bridge Project version of The Cherry Orchard, which is currently playing at BAM. There's also a lot of comedy, which is not a tree that is usually found in most Orchards, despite Chekhov's insistence that comedy describes the play perfectly. But then most translations of the good doctor's plays go for the wistful over the wacka-wacka-wacka; it's only in the one-acts, the obvious farces, that you're given a clear and consistent presentation of the over-the-top craziness that is Chekhov deliberately going for a laugh. Of course, if you listened to Anton talk about his own work, every page of his plays has laughs galore. But since an author's blindness to his own work is not limited to modern writers whose program notes have no relationship at all to what's on the stage, you have to take Chekhov's self-professed label as a comedian with not just a grain of salt, but a lemon and a shot of tequila.

The laughs in this version are more Stoppard than Chekhov, which is at the same time a plus and a minus. It’s no secret that, because English is Stoppard’s second language, he has a wider brush when it comes to wordplay. His émigré status is also the reason why there’s a continental feel to even his most British pieces -- the sense that they’re not taking place in London but in Schnitzler’s Vienna, where any ill-considered word could provoke pistols at dawn. In Chekhov it’s exactly the opposite; in Chekhov there are nothing but ill-considered words, which (when they are not deliberately ignored) provoke the distant sound of sleighs and carriages as much as they do gunshots. The best translations of his plays show people verbally stepping on each other’s toes, and meanwhile hiding a wince when their own little piggies get trod on.


Is Stoppard's that kind of translation? No. But then I don't think there's a translation in English that reproduces this aspect of Chekhov's writing. I don't even know if it can be done without tearing the plays apart and re-inventing them as American fables. And even then. Setting Cherry Orchard in Virginia circa 1900 and turning Lopakhin into the son of one of the plantation's slaves would be the only comparable analogy to what Lopakhin represents as the son of a Russian serf, but the American representation comes with its own unique cultural baggage which (a) warps the role of "servant" into something so culturally charged that (b) in essence you've got a totally new play, not about repressed emotions but a repressed race of people. (I'm putting it on my project list right under the 1950's version of Hedda Gabler. Oh wait--Cate Blanchett already did that one.)

Next: so if it's impossible, why do it? or, The Everest Effect.