Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Powerful Theater

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Antony & Cleopatra, Shakespeare, McCarter, Esau Pritchett

Nicole Ari Parker and Esau Pritchett in Antony & Cleopatra (photo: nj.com)

Last week we saw McCarter Theatre’s production of Antony & Cleopatra, directed by Emily Mann. It stars Esau Pritchett (who gave such a moving performance last year in August Wilson’s Fences), Nicole Ari Parker (Showtime’s Soul Food), and a strong supporting cast. Their performances, combined with a single stripped-down set for fast scene changes, gorgeous Cleopatra-wear, and an unexpected percussion accompaniment perfect in every beat add up to a whole greater than the parts.

This is the play about which some say, if all Shakespeare’s plays but one were lost, save this one, because it has passionate love (and a Romeo and Juliet-style ending), war, betrayal, tragedy, and Romans. Even some humor. It’s hard to judge the play itself, as its four-hour run-time was substantially cut, as so often happens, but the resulting production is fast-paced and emotionally rich. And this play is not often produced, so here’s your chance! Through October 5.

Wittenberg, David Davalos, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Jordan Coughtry, Anthony Marble, Erin Partin

Erin Partin, Anthony Marble, and Jordan Coughtry in Wittenberg (photo: STNJ)

There’s only one more week to catch The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s production of Wittenberg by David Davalos. Directed by Joseph Discher, this highly entertaining play set in 1517 at the eponymous university and town stars Jordan Coughtry as Prince Hamlet, a student, Mark Dold and Anthony Marble as Hamlet’s professors, the ideologically opposed Martin Luther and John Faustus, and wonderful Erin Partin as whatever lady is needed onstage at the moment.

Witty and fast-moving—great body language from Marble (Faustus), who is a would-be 16th c. rock star—it has modern touches that aren’t intrusive and numerous Hamlet references and puns. Faust’s office—Room 2B. If you’ve never seen a tennis match on stage, this is how it’s done, a nice metaphor for the lobbing back and forth of Hamlet’s budding worldview by Luther (God’s will) and Faustus (a man decides his own fate). Again, perfect set and costumes. We admired Erin Partin’s recent performance as Ariel in The Tempest, and a local review correctly noted about this performance that she plays each of her characters “with such veracity” that it seems multiple women are in the cast.

Such Stuff as Dreams: The Tempest vs. Ida

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Shakespeare, The Tempest

Sherman Howard (Prospero) and Erin Partin (Ariel) in The Tempest, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (photo: imgick.nj.com)

Quite a contrast recently between the nonstop cannonade of literary touchstones in The Tempest—in an exuberant and colorful production at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, alas, only through June 22—and the oppressive restraint of the near-silent black-and-white movie from Poland, Ida, viewed the same day (trailer).

In the live—and lively—play, the portrayals by Sherman Howard (Prospero), Lindsey Kyler (Miranda), John Barker (Caliban), and especially Erin Partin (Ariel) were remarkable.

Shakespeare touches button after button with his iconic quotes: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here” (wait, that sounds like John Boehner’s voice!), “Now I will believe that there are unicorns,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “What’s past is prologue,” , “O, brave new world, that has such people in’t,” “my library was dukedom large enough,” or “he receives comfort like cold porridge,” Ida has hardly any dialog.

David Denby in The New Yorker puts a positive spin on this, saying, “I can’t recall a movie that makes such expressive use of silence and portraiture.” In Ida, instead of being carried along by a current of words, we float in a bleak, misty, ambiguous atmosphere, albeit rendered with beautiful cinematography, “every shot as definitive as an icon,” Denby says, quite truly.

But after all Shakespeare’s verbal passion, Ida felt like cold porridge indeed. Perhaps the filmmakers had some great story in mind and just forgot to tell it, because they give the barest of bones and leave viewers (me, anyway) with more questions than answers—not so much about the past, which the movie explores in sufficient glimpses—but about what is going on right now in the minds of the characters on the screen.

Agata Kulesza, does a fine job playing the aunt of the main character, a sheltered, opaque novitiate raised in a convent (Ida), played less well by Agata Trzebuchowska. The pair uncover a terrible but not uncommon World War II tragedy, and the question of whether exposure to her aunt’s earthiness will persuade somnambulant Ida to abandon the convent seems none too debatable. Bear in mind the Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it 93%, so don’t take my word for it.

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Lay on, Macduff!

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Macbeth, Sargent

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent (photo: farm2.staticflickr.com)

Word is out that Norwegian thriller writer Jo Nesbø, who writes a mystery series featuring brilliant and unorthodox Oslo police detective Harry Hole, is developing a crime noir, prose retelling of Macbeth. It’s part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project in which noted writers—including Pulitzer-winner Anne Tyler, noted Canadian author Margaret Atwood, and Man Booker prize-winner Howard Jacobson–are reinventing Shakespeare plays “for modern readers.”

It will be hard for Nesbø to top mystery writer David Hewson and Shakespeare scholar A.J. Hartley’s Macbeth: A Novel, which I have endlessly encouraged my friends and readers to immerse themselves in—especially the initial, audiobook version narrated by Alan Cumming. As a person who has listened to several hundred audio books, I can attest that this is one of the Very Best. You’ll never feel the same about Macbeth or those three witches, hereafter.

(The painting of actor Ellen Terry portraying Lady Macbeth is by one of my most revered artists, John Singer Sargent, who painted my favorite painting of all time, at London’s Tate Gallery.)

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