Saturday, February, 23, 2013: a group of nearly seventy UM-Flint students and their guests headed south to Ann Arbor, MI, to take in two Shakespeare plays performed by Propeller, an all-male theater company from England. The 2pm performance of Twelfth Night and the 7:30pm Taming of the Shrew were both wonderful examples of how well Shakespeare can be performed!
The first act of Twelfth Night opened with a stage in chaos: overturned chairs, dusty sheets hanging from furniture, and a wrecked chandelier on the ground. Feste the Fool, played by Liam O’Brien, opened the show with a beautiful and haunting song and the action never slowed from there. Using ingenious staging and props, and a cast that was in no way hindered by its small numbers, Propeller performed a rendition that was breathtaking and hilarious, poignant and professional. Beyond the expectation of knowing lines and delivering them well, each member of the cast performed multiple functions throughout the play. Sporting grey half-masks, they were able to be a background presence when not in the spotlight – becoming an onstage audience or simply silent observers. In an element that added a great deal of magic to the show, each actor also played an instrument! Sometimes nearly all the players would be making music, and at other times it was just a single instrument adding an eerie melody to the show. The instruments ran the gamut from guitar to saxophone to wind chimes, and they worked to add an amazing depth of emotion to many scenes.
The character of Maria, played by Gary Shelford, was a crowd favorite. His comedic timing, fantastic facial and body expressions, and tap dancing skills kept the audience engaged and laughing!
Another stand out player was Joseph Chance who played Viola/Cesario. In a video interview on the Propeller site, Chance talks about the character of Viola getting into his muscles and bones, and one can believe it when watching his performance. To be a man playing a woman playing a man… you can imagine how gender roles could become tangled and a bit muddy, but not so for Chance! He managed to give the character of Viola both strength and vulnerability. In some of the more touching scenes between Viola and Orsino one can completely forget the gender that should be kept track of and simply feel the emotion of two humans connecting.
Truly, each player and each scene deserve an in-depth discussion of their power and near perfection. I’ve never been so enthralled and entertained by a live performance, nor so thoroughly drawn into a world on stage.
After a brief break the cast was back in new costumes and with a revamped stage to perform the comedy Taming of the Shrew. With an updated feel and shrewish Kate dressed as an angry goth princess, the play was an emotionally aggressive ride straight through to its end. The Propeller site bills Taming as a “brash, brutal and darkly comic story [that] pulls no punches” (propeller.org.uk). And are they ever right! Where Twelfth Night left the audience breathless from laughter, the audience after Taming of the Shrew was much more taciturn. Kate and Petruchio were both played to their outer limits with results that bordered on disturbing – by the end, Petruchio’s cruelty and Kate’s brokenness are embedded in the audience members.
Occasional relief from the intensity was provided by John Dougall’s portrayal of the lecherous old Gremio who could not help but cackle gleefully when speaking about his potential bride.
Perhaps because it was played so differently from the discussions held in class, the choices made in the acting seemed surprising to most students attending from UM-Flint. Beyond some of the unexpected characterizations, there were some interesting staging decisions made. For example, Christopher Sly joins in the players during the induction scene to become Petruchio in the play-within-a-play. This leads to the performance concluding as Sly’s dream, instead of the open-ended conclusion of Shakespeare’s writing. A decision that lead to some great post-performance discussions! That may have been the greatest strength of this performance of Taming: it sticks with the audience long after they’ve left the theater. It provokes the viewers into thinking about what they just saw instead of being dazzled by laughter, lights, and music. Its real-world connections to violence and misogyny are easily felt, and make the performance uncomfortable – as witnessing such things should be.
Watching such powerful performances of these plays was a wonderful reminder of how relevant Shakespeare still is in this day and age. After hundreds of years, his insight and talent for exposing human nature are still captivating audiences, inspiring actors, and giving the world so much more than appears on the surface of his plays.
For preview videos of these two plays:
http://propeller.org.uk/current-productions/twelfth-night-and-the-taming-of-the-shrew/video
For more information on Propeller: http://propeller.org.uk
Amy Hartwig, guest blogger, former Sigma Tau Delta president, and Maize and Blue nominee