Women on Shakespeare: Anwen Darcy as Beatrice & Mercutio

Since most Shakespearean casts are male-heavy (and some are male-only), coverage tends to focus on men who create the work. Let's balance that out! This is #11 in my interview series, Women on Shakespeare. I'm talking with the women who produce and perform Shak and related work.

Nearly out on the streets a few years ago, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot has instead expanded to a 'second stage' in midtown, with Bryant Park Presents. The company has recast Anwen Darcy as Beatrice in its Much Ado About Nothing, after her acclaimed turn as Mercutio last summer. I emailed with Anwen about these two essentially Shakespearean characters.

Let’s start with your role in Much Ado. What makes Beatrice such a fully-realized character onstage?

Beatrice is one of Shakespeare's great women due to the fact that she's flawed. It's what makes her impossibly complicated and wonderful to play. She is, of course, witty and rambunctious and full of life. But she also has this corrosive edge to her, particularly in regards to Benedick. Add to that some of the best dialogue Shakespeare has ever written, and you have a woman who is more modern than most female parts written in the last 20 years.

Corrosive how?

You look at their first scene together, when he arrives back from the war, and she absolutely cannot sit on her disdain and pain at seeing him again. Of course, she also can't not talk to him, partly because she wants to humiliate him and partly because she wants his attention. That push and pull is fascinating, and it lends itself to be played thousands of different ways. You add in that she is hiding (very poorly, as the play lets you discover) a broken heart that still can't shake the breaker, and it all adds up to a fascinating starting place. Beatrice starts the show quite frosty, and I've found more you lean into how hard she is in the beginning, the more payoff you get at the end of the show.

I cannot tell you how satisfying that is, to just be allowed to be pissed off onstage without trying to qualify it. So often people try to soften women's anger onstage, to try and make sure you stay pretty and soft, and Beatrice is none of those things in the beginning of the show. She's just fine alone, but she knows she deserves more, and deserves to be loved for who she is without being changed. She's also had her heart stomped on (whether intentionally or not) by the only person she's ever deigned to show interest in, and Shakespeare lets her carry that. It doesn't go away once Benedick tells her he loves her—she distrusts him up until their final scene alone, when he tells her that he did challenge Claudio, and that he is actively choosing her over anyone else.

You've worked with your Benedick, McKey Carpenter, before. How does that help the onstage chemistry?

I'm exceptionally lucky in that not only have I worked with my Benedick before (this is our fifth show together) but I've also tackled Shakespearean barbs with him. McKey was the Tybalt to my Mercutio, so we have lots of practice hissing and spitting at each other. The difference is that this time we can let our affection and history with each other shine through.

I also think trust is a huge part of the wordplay of this show—because you have just have to unleash these torrents of dialogue at each other, you have to know that the other person is going to be there for you, both in scenes where you hate each other and the scenes where you love each other. The end of the wedding scene is a great example of this—Beatrice is finally fully unleashed, and she just has this righteous furious scream of mourning dialogue for Hero, for the death of men, for her inability to be of any help. Benedick has maybe five interjections in two pages, but he has to be there, in the scene, as fully committed as if the dialogue was bouncing back and forth. McKey's always there. You can't do one half of this show without the other.

McKay Carpenter & Anwen Darcy
as Benedick & Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing

What strategies do you have for the wordplay?

One of the tactics we have in our arsenal for the warm up is a speed-through of all our scenes together. A lot of what makes Benedick and Beatrice so delightful is the speed at which they think up these terrible and hilarious insults. So we make sure that we are sharp on our cues and know precisely when to come in, where to cut a glance to the audience, when to move. We've also been known to run lines jumping up and down or mock punching each other, but that's mostly just because we both enjoy hitting things.

I can tell you that the best way to nail the wordplay is a vocal warm-up (which is important) or bouncing a tennis ball back and forth while we run lines to keep up a pace (very much not important or particularly helpful). But at the end of the day you need just need the right partner, otherwise you can never let go and just let the words guide you. 

Let’s talk about Beatrice & Hero. What have you discovered about their relationship?

Beatrice and Hero's relationship is the engine of the play. To me, Hero is Beatrice's heart—there is nothing in the world she wants more than Hero's happiness. You see it when Claudio and Hero get engaged—Beatrice is so excited she is answering for them, because she fully believes that her beloved cousin got her happy ending, and that's enough for her. She says "Good Lord for alliance! Thus goes everyone to the world but I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry, 'Heigh-ho for a husband!'" which on its surface, seems a little bit like Beatrice is trying to steer the conversation back to herself. To me, this highlights not just how at ease Beatrice is with her lack of a husband, but how she views Hero. Hero is everyone in the world to her, and now that her world is safely in the hands of her beloved, thus can Beatrice return to her happy corner of the world, unworried by men or love.

It's one of the few female relationships in Shakespeare unfettered by any sort of jealousy. Hero genuinely wants Beatrice to get together with Benedick, Beatrice genuinely wants Hero to marry Claudio, and both women want that because that is what they know lies in the heart of the other woman. They are both driven by love, and that's fascinatingly rare—there are no ugly ulterior motives in the relationship.

Did you draw (or reject) from other Beatrices you've seen?

Carpenter & Darcy in Much Ado

I tried to watch as many versions of the show as possible once I knew I was cast and had strong ideas of my own but well before we started rehearsal. So my Christmas was spent watching other Beatrices and seeing what I thought worked, what I thought didn't, what cuts I thought were completely egregious. What struck me most was how a lot of versions I watched couldn't decide on what the show was, exactly. I think a lot of people have an abstract idea that "Oh, Beatrice is the funny one and everything should be played for a laugh." I know I made a very conscious decision not to try to be funny—which sounds ridiculous! It's a comedy! But this is a show where the comedy needs to be weightless and top itself, and the more comedic business you add on each line, the more stakes you add to that line, until suddenly you are watching all these Beatrices' trying to hit a home-run belly-laugh on every single line. And it is not only exhausting, but when you are fighting for a laugh, it obscures a fair amount of the beautiful language.

What about the movies?

I was, for many many years, entirely obsessed with Emma Thompson's Beatrice, and Emma Thompson herself. I am sure I have probably stolen more than I realize from her, but quite honestly, if you are going to accidentally be a poor copy of someone, at least be Emma Thompson.

I know many many people loved Joss Whedon's version, but I have yet to sit through it without screaming—it epitomized (to me) what happens when you remove the musicality and formality of the show, and it seemed to rob anyone (but particularly Beatrice, unconstrained by society or outside judgement) of specific stakes. I'm currently trying to find a video of the Janet McTeer/Mark Rylance Much Ado [London, 1993] as a closing night present to myself. I want to weep at their utter perfection when I no longer have to attempt to even use the same yardstick as them.

I’m interested in gender-bent casting, so I’d love to hear more about your Mercutio last summer. How did you address the gender swap onstage or in rehearsal?

Mercutio is a part that pretty much does all of your work for you, if you let it. He has surprisingly few scenes—I think there are maybe three major ones (four if you break the beginning of Act Three into two scenes), plus a cameo appearance at the ball. But I have never had people react to a character just walking onstage they way people do when Merc comes on. The audience is ready. They want you to be outrageous, they want to laugh.

How did you approach the role?

Anwen Darcy as Mercutio
in Romeo & Juliet (2015)

I remember when I got the offer to do Mercutio, the brief was just "Tank Girl in Verona". So I built on that, and very gradually it became apparent to me that Mercutio was male, regardless of what my sex was. Merc is a boy. So Romeo and Benvolio treated me like a man—I don't think we even wound up swapping pronouns in their lines because I was absolutely 100 percent male to them. So to us, it was still three boys against the world. It wound up affecting Tybalt more, I think—he was the only one who ever referred to me as female onstage, and it was only during the fight, so he was using it as weapon of sorts. So to the actors, we had a very specific roadmap of negotiating the sex change.

You know Sebastian Stan in the Captain America movies? Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier was the endgame, physically, for Mercutio. We just wanted there to be so much going on—hair, eye makeup, sais hanging off my hips, scuffed-up combat boots and jacket—that it hid any kind of distinct femininity and just switched into an aggressive sexuality. 

Did your gender alter the dynamic with your Romeo?

Romeo and Juliet has a very pronounced and vocal community of Romeo/Mercutio/Benvolio shippers (people who think that those characters are romantically involved, and in any and all ways that triangle would allow it to happen) so it was interesting to see how that affected people's perception. I certainly wasn't playing any romantic interest in Romeo, but lots of people commented on how they saw the romantic longing there in our scenes together. Whether or not that was because I was female or whether it's just because it's a very popular subtext in Romeo and Juliet commentary right now, I don't know.

Talking about Shakespeare more generally, what’s your perspective on his roles for women?

I think one of Shakespeare's great strengths in writing women is that he lets them be flawed, he lets them be whole messy people with internal engines and agendas. I think the problem you run into is that then he doesn't know how to reconcile that with the endings of his shows, a lot of times.

What do you mean?

Anwen Darcy as Beatrice

Look at Much Ado. Beatrice pretty much talks her way through every single scene she is in, regardless of the sex of the other people on stage with her. Then you hit the wedding. Beatrice has five lines in the wedding, three of which are some variation on "Hero, why are you falling down? Hero??" She briefly defends her cousin's honor, but it's one of the few times you see her immediately back down when confronted. Why isn't she talking? We know she has a lot of opinions and feelings about the situation—her explosion at Benedict in the next scene confirms that. But after the wedding, after the humiliation of Hero, Beatrice stops talking out of turn. She stops driving scenes. She surrenders the narrative entirely to Benedick, issuing him an ultimatum and then leaving. It's horrible! It's infuriating, because Beatrice is more than capable of cutting Claudio and Don Pedro down to size. But she doesn't—she defers to Benedick. So as a modern woman, that's infuriating. Beatrice has so much going for her, and it's dropped at the end of the show because she's in love and no longer needs to be complicated.

I see!

And that, to me, is the biggest flaws of Shakespeare's shows—once an intelligent and complicated woman has served her purpose, she stops talking. In Lady Macbeth's case, she dies offstage. OFFSTAGE!! She gets a couple of lines explaining her death, and that's it. So it's a challenge to motivate the sudden drop in your lines—why is Beatrice, a woman who talks so much that she is compared to a parrot—suddenly silent? I'm still a little mad at Will at that one. I don't think any of his plays are beyond salvaging, but I do think being mindful of the way women-of-agency are treated is very important.

Are there any particular Shakespearean roles you’d love to play?

Of course I have a Shakespeare bucket list. I've been very, very lucky because I've knocked a couple of dream roles—Hermia, Princess of France, Mercutio and now Beatrice—off very early in my career. I'd love to come back to Beatrice, maybe in ten years, just to see how differently I see her then. Cleopatra is next on my list—it's such a complicated play, and Shakespeare's Cleo is such a weird mix of romantic and deeply pragmatic that I really want to tackle it and just drive myself crazy. Titus is another one—I've wanted to play Lavinia for ages, because she's so important to the show and yet is completely silent for most of her stage time. As someone who is normally given pages upon pages of dialogue, I would really love the challenge of playing someone who is primarily onstage to project her internal life, and who can only communicate in limited physical movement. And I think Kate in Shrew has got to be on anyone's list. Just a chance to tackle that final monologue, to try and wrangle that beast into submission, is a challenge I think pretty much all classical actors have spent time thinking about.

Any dream-roles traditionally played by men?

In terms of gender bending—I am deeply jealous of any man who has ever gotten to be Henry V. I love that show, I love Henry, I love the whole leadup to his journey in Henry IV parts 1 and 2. I would probably do a lot of terrible, terrible things if you promised me that I could be Prince Hal.

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Bryant Park Presents and The Drilling Company's Much Ado About Nothing runs from May 19 to June 4 in Bryant Park. Tickets are free.

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headshot  Laura Rose
photos #2,3, & 5  Remy
photo #4  Josef Pinlac

Women on Shakespeare: Maria-Christina Oliveras on Romeo & Juliet

Since most Shakespearean casts are male-heavy (and some are male-only), coverage tends to focus on men who create the work. Let's balance that out! This is #10 in my interview series, Women on Shakespeare. I'm talking with the women who produce and perform Shak and related work.

Twice every season, the Mobile Shakespeare Unit tours city neighborhoods with limited access to the arts. The company is about to conclude its all-boro tour of Romeo & Juliet with a brief run at the Public. It's on topic to note that this R&J is directed by one of NYC's top Women in Shakespeare, Lear deBessonet. I e-mailed with the company's Nurse, Maria Christina Oliveras, about the play, the Unit's audience, and representation in Shakespeare and theater.

Let’s start with the Mobile Unit’s production of Romeo & Juliet. You play the Nurse, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved minor characters. What have you discovered about the role?

I fall in love with every role I play, but the Nurse has been particularly joyous. She has a huge appetite for life, and is a fearless force of nature. She literally bursts with energy and emotion and love in every moment, and Juliet is her heart and soul.

To me, the crux of the character lies in, “I am the drudge and toil in your delight.” Everything she does is for Juliet’s happiness because it is her own. My cousin once told me that when his first born came into the world, he felt like he no longer mattered—not in a bad way, but his child’s joy was now his joy. Another friend said that having a child is like having your heart out in the world in another being. That’s how the Nurse feels about Juliet. Her own daughter and husband have died, and she has devoted her life to her Lady—and when she does something, she does it all out. She loves on levels above and beyond, and this motivates every decision she makes. When Juliet dies (or she thinks she dies), she dies too. Textually, she literally disappears.

What makes the Nurse so popular with audiences?

I think her ferocity, her willingness to wear her heart on her sleeve, her deep belief in love and faith in God, her lack of pretense, her amazing down and dirty sense of humor and her lack of any filters, have made her a favorite among audiences. Also, she is the friend everyone wants: fiercely committed and loyal—deeply loving and nurturing and maternal, but she will cut and take down anyone who crosses her, or more importantly, someone she loves.

Directors tend to cast white men in Shakespeare, partly out of habit. What do you bring to Shakespeare, as a woman and a Hispanic New Yorker, that traditional casting can’t?

Unfortunately, directors tend to cast white, whether in Shakespeare or not. I actually think Shakespeare supports more integrated casting, and it’s actually now an anomaly (especially at great theaters such as the Public and TFANA) for a classic work to be all white. In fact, I think, unlike other areas of the industry, it is looked down upon, so it is heartening that there are indeed more opportunities in Shakespeare for people of color.

My Nurse is based on three very specific women I know who happen to be Latina. To that end, I do tap into my own heritage as a FiliRican New Yorker (specifically the Puerto Rican side) and Catholic upbringing to bring her to life. I hope my take is very identifiable and relatable, particularly in NYC. There are so many amazing caretakers who migrated to this country and provide the backbone and support to wealthy families, and I strive to honor them with my portrayal.

Lear deBessonet and the Mobile Unit have a strong streak of populism in them. What did you know about her work beforehand?

I have been a huge fan of Lear since seeing her Good Person of Szechwan and the Public Works’ production of The Tempest. To this day, they are two of the best theatrical experiences I have ever had. I remember fan-girling over her in my socially awkward, overly effusive way when we first met. To say the least, I was thrilled to be working with her and her “strong streak of populism,” particularly on the Mobile Unit.

How have your views affected the production's approach to R&J?

I know there’s all kinds of theater out there, and there’s room for all of it, but my heart and soul lies in theater that is innately populist. Everyone should be able to enjoy it, learn from it, have access to it—how beautiful if a piece can bring people together from all walks of life, if only for one night to breathe in the same room and be transported by a story that they can all relate to with their differing perspectives.

I am so over theater being for and catering to an exclusive, homogenous crowd—theater should not be exclusive, and should be relevant and accessible for the elite and the masses alike. Shakespeare wrote for the groundlings and royalty all at once… and he writes of deeply felt passions and struggles and desires and needs that are universal and that absolutely everyone can relate to if they are a human being. 

That said, we have to acknowledge that during Shakespeare’s time, their relationship to language and their vernacular were different. In a world where texting and bitmoji’s and e-mails have become the predominant way to communicate, we seem to be getting farther way from live verbal exchanges. And so, as with any piece, we have to know our audience and celebrate and embrace the fact that we are telling this story in New York City in 2016.

How do deBessonet and her designers bring 2016 NYC into Shakespeare's Verona?

We also have an amazing musician, Marques Toliver, who plays live and whose music is an eclectic fusion of soul, classical, R&B, which audiences love. Our choreographer, Benoit Swan, also offered up a fusion of contemporary and classical styles. Both elements minimize the distancing that people often associate with Shakespeare, making it more accessible for everyone.

What other factors did you have to take into account?

We also had to consider time constraints. To that end, we have streamlined the text, while maintaining the integrity of the story. What text is absolutely necessary? What is, at this point, too esoteric? And, as every rehearsal process should, we have been hyper-tuned to understanding the nuance of everything we say, so that we communicate the story clearly and enter into it with a deep sense of empathy and understanding. We emphasized using the language as action and as a very physical act, rooted in epic primal desires. These audiences have amazing B.S. meters, so they keep us honest in emotional truth and authenticity.

According to your bio, you grew up in the Bronx. How’s it been to tour your home borough with the Mobile Unit?

I am indeed Bronx born and bred. We were just up at Williamsbridge Oval Recreation Center, 15 minutes from my childhood home. It was great to be back, but more importantly, through this whole tour, it has been wonderful to see so many people of color, young and old, from all walks of life, eager to consume Shakespeare and devour stories. To perform for audiences and alongside a cast that truly reflects our world, specifically NYC in all its rich, beautiful diversity, has been such a gift. I say this particularly in light of the theatrical landscape, both onstage and off, which unfortunately, more often than not, tends to be rather limited in its representation.

How have the local audiences been enjoying your production?

Every venue on this tour is so different, and as with any audience, each has its own distinct personality. Each performance is a dance between us and them, and it’s so exciting to get to know your partner. Is it going to be a fox trot? Tango? Waltz? Hip-hop? Every audience gravitates toward something different in the play, and I learn so much from what they hear and respond to. At one of the men’s correctional facilities, when I tell Juliet that Romeo is banished for killing Tybalt, one of the gentleman says to me, “Tell her there are conjugal visits in NY.” Truth—and on some level, that’s exactly what I facilitate when I go to find Romeo so they can consummate their marriage.

Any other surprises?

When we were up at Casita Maria in the Bronx, a young high school gentleman reacted very strongly when Tybalt calls Romeo a slave—this young man heard “slave” and our Romeo happens to be black, and his reaction was, “Yo, he’s racist.” Up at Williamsbridge Rec Center, we had a middle school there who is putting up a production of R&J—the young lady playing the Nurse and I had a wonderful post-show discussion where we exchanged some thoughts on the character. There are so many amazing anecdotes, and truly, I have been humbled to learn so much about the play and its relevance through the eyes and ears of our audiences.

Aside from seeing you in Machinal, I think of you mainly as an actor of new musicals.

I am so grateful to float between genres. I think part of the reason I am an actor is I have intense wanderlust, and constantly need new stimuli and new challenges. Going from a contemporary play, to a new musical, to a Shakespeare, my muscles and skills set are constantly being re-built and tapped in new ways, and I never feel stagnant in my growth and learning.

Could you compare musical theater to Shakespeare? What skills do you draw on from musicals to perform Shak’s play?

In both musicals and Shakespeare, the needs and stakes of all the characters are huge—so huge that heightened language or a song are inevitable. The only way to express what you are feeling is through this lofted language. Also, Shakespeare’s plays are like great pieces of music, and once you know the structure and the map, i.e. all the notes and rhythms and keys, and it is in your bones, you get to scat and play, and lose yourself in the work, tossing a riff in here and there, extending a note where the impulse and need arise. This virtuosic play can only come once you know the map and rules. As with musicals, you must know your music and every step, before you can truly let it all go. To that end, the technical demands are similar. Both are athletic events, so you really have to keep your instrument on point, physically and vocally because you have to have full range of expression in order to inhabit these deep needs and desires.

Have you acted in Shakespeare or other classics before this?

I did the Shakespeare Lab at the Public in 2004 right before I went back to grad school. It was a full-on immersion for 3 months, so it’s bittersweet and lovely to be at the Public doing Shakespeare again. My senior project at Yale was Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, and in grad school, I got to explore a one-person show I wrote of Lady M. in the private moments in her hotel room after the coronation. I also did Lady Capulet, so it’s been great to explore R&J from the Nurse’s perspective. This summer, I’m thrilled to be doing Macbeth in Macbeth, and Jaques in As You Like It at Hudson Valley Shakespeare, so will continue in the classics for a bit.

Do you think training is necessary to play Shakespeare?

I don’t think you need years of formal training to understand or be able to perform Shakespeare, but it is highly demanding technically, and to that end, I do think some form of training or really great directors or coaches who can guide are key. Not because you need to make it sound a specific way, or act it a specific way, but it is athletic, and like going to the gym, you only get better with each session, and are able to build and learn and go farther in the game. Plus, I think any artist only gets better with time and experience whether it’s out in the trenches or in classroom settings.

Do you have any particular Shakespearean roles you’d love to perform? Not just the women either—any dream-roles traditionally played by men?

Iago really interests me at this point. I’m thrilled to do Macbeth and Jaques, both of which were bucket list roles for me. At some point, I would like to explore Lady M. and Paulina—I will never forget Mary Lou Rosato’s portrayal of her—when she said, “It is required. You do awake your faith” it was one of the most magical moments of theater I have ever experienced. As an artist, I strive to disturb the air for at least one moment, when time stands still, and she did this for me. It would excite me to explore any Shakespeare with a director who has a clear vision, and I definitely would love another crack at Cleopatra again in a couple of years.

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The Public Theater Mobile Unit's Romeo & Juliet runs from April 11 to May 1 at the Public Theater in the East Village.

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photos  Joan Marcus

Women on Shakespeare: Laura Hirschberg on Verona Walls

Since most Shakespearean casts are male-heavy (and some are male-only), coverage tends to focus on the men onstage and behind the scenes. Let's balance that out! This is #6 in my interview series, Women on Shakespeare. I'm talking with the women who produce and perform Shak and related work.

This week, I'm glad to get the chance to talk to a playwright about Shakespeare. Laura Hirschberg has set her play, Verona Walls, just before act one of Romeo and Juliet. By basing her play on Shakespeare's works, she joins a tradition that stretches all the back to his own lifetime, when John Fletcher wrote The Tamer Tamed. Laura took some time to email with me about Shakespearean inspiration and adaptation.

Let’s start with Verona Walls. What's its relationship to Romeo and Juliet?

My shorthand explanation of Verona Walls has always been: “Mercutio in Love.” The plot begins a week before the action of Romeo and Juliet kicks off and focuses on Mercutio — Romeo's best friend, one of Verona's leading wits, a gentleman, a rascal, a lover and a fighter. At the top of the show, Mercutio has had one too many bad dates and failed romances and decides to swear off love. Of course, that's destiny's cue to throw a girl into his path who shakes up his world completely. And as that story unfolds, Mercutio is also ruled by his love and devotion to Verona and the “Montague boys” — a love that proves increasingly dangerous as the events of Shakespeare's play bleed into the onstage action of Verona Walls.

How far did you go in turning Mercutio into your own creation?

I can't deny that at this point, Verona Walls' Mercutio is more mine than Shakespeare's. But at the core he is Shakespeare's [character]. He is the man who rails against love and dreams in his “Queen Mab” speech and then, a handful of scenes later, dies because of events set into motion by love and dreams. He's brave and loyal and foolish and hilarious. And that's all in the Shakespeare. But behind the Shakespeare is my guy, who is all of the things previously mentioned, but he's also a man in love, pulled in opposite directions by people and places and values that just can't manage to coexist.

There’s a long history of rewriting Shakespeare’s plays. How do you approach that legacy?

I'm pretty enthusiastically well-versed in that legacy and I like to think that every adaptation I've encountered, from Rosencrantz and Guidenstern Are Dead to West Side Story to Forbidden Planet, has played a part in the unique world I've created for this piece. I describe our setting as “Shakespeare's Verona” because this is a play set outside of specific time and place. This Verona is Zeffirelli's and Bernstein's and Luhrmann's and Shakespeare's and mine. Verona Walls is full of anachronisms — Star Wars references, W.H. Auden poems, Foo Fighters riffs, along with lines from Richard II and Hamlet —because the themes of this play, like the themes of Romeo and Juliet, repeat throughout history and literature and music and will go on repeating. So that's the Verona we're dealing with — every Verona, any Verona.

You invent a romantic partner for Mercutio, an adventurer named Alyssa. What led to her conception?

Mercutio is hard to match. I needed someone up to snuff and I found I had to go outside of Shakespeare's canon. Shakespeare has his strong women — powerful, funny, resourceful — but overwhelmingly, they are tied to their worlds. I think part of what makes Mercutio so appealing is that he doesn't quite fit. So I created Alyssa — a woman with no interest in belonging to any particular place or group. She's a citizen of the world, something he's never seen before and doesn't really know how to deal with.

What did she let you do that couldn’t be done with Shakespeare’s raw materials?

By going outside of Shakespeare, I could let Alyssa be truly free. She is whoever she chooses to be. Her words aren't borrowed and we don't know where she came from or where she might be headed.

Speaking more generally, what’s your relationship with Shakespeare, playwright to playwright?

I'm an unabashed Shakespeare fan-girl. As a writer, director, and human being, I come back to Shakespeare time and time again because his plays strike at the heart. I'm not saying every word of Cymbeline or As You Like It contains some profound truth. Rather, throughout his work, I find these pitch-perfect encapsulations of the human experience. 

As my personal experiences evolve, different bits of his plays push their way to the forefront. And that's something I aspire to as a writer: Creating something that the reader/viewer can grow up with, something that hits you differently if you're in love or in mourning, twenty years old or sixty, but it still hits you. Also, as a writer, the number of jokes Shakespeare can cram into one speech is enough to make your jaw drop.

What in Shakespeare’s dramaturgy that you find inspiring? In your work on Verona Walls or elsewhere, have you stolen any techniques or devices from him?

Wordplay wordplay wordplay. His precision with language is hugely inspiring, down to the rhythm and emphases within the lines. For this play, I've borrowed a heavy dose of dramatic irony from him, in addition to some double entendre and a few nearly tragic misunderstandings. But I very intentionally dodged a trope of his that I find particularly frustrating in Romeo and Juliet — the intervention of fate or bad luck. In this play, there are certainly some events that are beyond the characters' control, but when it comes down to it, they make their choices and play out their hands.

What’s your perspective on Shakespeare's female roles?

Really, what's unfortunate is how few women there are in his plays. Because when you land on a good female role in Shakespeare, she's really good. She's Lady Macbeth or Margaret or Lady Percy or Joan of Arc. Beatrice and Rosaline and, yes, Juliet and Ophelia—these are all powerful parts. It is unfortunate that often in Shakespeare, women are obstacles or prizes to be won or victims. But these women are real people, with needs and flaws and passions — all of which can dramatically affect the trajectory of the plays they're in.

I struggle with a character like Desdemona because I want her to be smarter, more active.  She might not be able to change the course of events, but I'm desperate for her to investigate. That's why I'm so thankful for the presence of Emilia in Othello. She has even less power in her society than Desdemona, but she makes herself heard and goes down fighting. Shakespeare often gives us that kind of balance—you've got Hero, but right next to her is Beatrice. No one burns hotter than Hotspur… except his wife, Lady Percy.

Is there anything in his plays that's beyond salvaging?

There may be no salvaging for Taming of the Shrew. But otherwise, when we come upon these questions like “How can Hero be okay with marrying Claudio at the end of Much Ado?”, maybe the way to move forward with these “problematic” women is to embrace the problem — let there be a little something undeniably wrong even as everything else gets tied up in a bow.

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The Workshop Theater's Verona Walls runs from March 3 to 26 at the Workshop Theater in the Garment District.

photo 1  Laura Hirschberg
photo 2  Rachel Flynn & Ryan McMurdy

Review: 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Red Bull)

’Tis Pity She's a Whore

playwright  John Ford

company  Red Bull

theater  The Duke on 42nd Street

players

Matthew Amendt, Kelley Curran, Clifton Duncan, Ryan Farley, Ryan Garbayo, Philip Goodwin, Christopher Innvar, Amelia Pedlow, Everett Quinton, Rocco Sisto, Derek Smith, Franchelle Stewart Dorn, Auden Thornton, Tramell Tillman, Marc Vietor

director  Jesse Berger

set  David M. Barber

costumes  Sara Jean Tosetti

lights  Peter West

sound  John D. Ivy

music  Adam Wernick

Amelia Pedlow & Matthew Amendt
in Red Bull's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

Although the tightly-knit companies I’ve covered recently have produced inventive work, they also have a major shortcoming. Both Fiasco’s 2 Gents and Bedlam’s 12th Night were comprised entirely of white actors. I passed on the Wooster Group's Troilus and Cressida (AKA Cry, Trojans!) partly because of its racial politics (the Trojans were American Indians, the actors were white; and that's only the tip of the controversy). Meanwhile the Broadway shows in the Shake-sphere’s orbit, Wolf Hall and Something Rotten, have one black man and one black woman between them.

This is not okay. The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries are especially suited to diversity in casting. They are rooted in poetry, theatricality, and fantastical plots; there’s almost nothing ‘realistic’ about them, and plenty that’s artificial. Except in cases where race is specifically a theme (e.g. Othello), Shak offers his producers the chance to make their troupe into a utopia of post-racial opportunity.

So Red Bull gets points simply for diversity in casting their ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. One main role and two supporting roles go to black actors. Their melanin content in no way interferes with John Ford’s vision of an ultra-decadent Renaissance Italy, and their talent abets Jesse Berger’s vision of noble depravity.

’Tis Pity is one of the era’s masterpieces unjustly eclipsed by Shakespeare’s reputation—much better than Titus A. or Richard 3. But then the tragedy itself lives in Shak’s shadow. The conventional description of Tis Pity is “What if Romeo and Juliet were siblings?” Ford deliberately nods to R&J by giving the brother a priest and the sister a nurse as confidantes. He revisits the earlier play’s clash between passion and propriety, but from the complex, equivocal viewpoints of Hamlet and Lear. The play climaxes not with a suicide pact but with a murder/suicide.

On the page and in most productions, the brother is the focus of the action. But Berger’s cuts and direction shift focus subtly to the sister, played with great intelligence by Amelia Pedlow. She shows the self-possession of a good Shakespearean ingénue: feminine and smart, alternately frisky and haughty as the situation demands. Her character can seem like a victim, hemmed in by men’s decisions—father, brother, suitors, husband—but Pedlow gives her loss of autonomy a tragic dignity. In that way, she and Berger give the climactic murder/suicide a proto-feminist slant.

Matthew Amendt portrays her fraternal/romantic stage-partner as a bookish man strung out by his Freudian impulses. He tears into the Marlovian audacity of a character made almost drunk by his defiance of convention. The company as a whole gives broad and lusty performances; their pleasure in such lurid plots and colorful characters drives much of the show’s first half. Indeed, as Ford closes off his subplots to focus on the siblings’ mental agitation, the show loses some of its gaudy thrill. Much of the pleasure from this Whore derives from the broad characterizations, pitched to match a play whose bloody finale has the protagonist stabbing his brother-in-law with a dagger already impaled with his sister’s heart!

Ford and Berger’s ’Tis Pity is a work of aesthetic overload, epitomized by Sara Jean Tosetti’s phenomenal costumes. Take the outfit of the stock idiot fop character: his too-wide ruff, a leopard-print women’s jacket, and clunky black’n’gold heels are fabulously glam while borrowing enough from Jacobean fashion to make the setting specific.

Berger, with his brave cast and savvy designers, exploits the potential latent in Ford’s tragedy. He and Scenic designer David Barbour provide half a dozen entrances to the stage, including a balcony for the heroine. This feature helps him keep the pace quick without tangling the subplots. In fact, this staging is more clear and engaging than many simpler dramas. The interlocking plots move like clockwork. The playing is conversational, emphasizing dialogue and clarity over verse. That’s a smart choice, since the play and production otherwise aim for maximalism. Incest and intrigue has never been so much fun!

Kelley Curran & Clifton Duncan
in Red Bull's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

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Red Bull's ’Tis Pity She's a Whore runs Apr 14 thru May 16 at the Duke on 42nd Street.

photos: Richard Termine

Review: Romeo and Juliet (CSC)

CSC's Romeo and Juliet is stripped down,
sometimes not just aesthetically
(photo: Joan Marcus)

Shakespeare may work best when we recognize ourselves in his plays. In the Classic Stage production of Romeo and Juliet (not to be confused with the entertaining-yet-bland version on Broadway) director Tea Alagiç finds a modern American city in Shakespeare’s Italianate setting. Through brisk strokes—and helped especially by Clint Ramos’ character-at-a-glance costuming—Alagiç sketches the diversity of class, race, sexuality, and maturity (both age and attitude) that Shakespeare has invented. Yet paradoxically, each scene’s location is as generic as Verona is specific. Alagiç and Marsha Ginsberg set the stage in a minimalist style: an empty space, supplemented by a few pieces of Ikea’s modernist furniture and backed by a white cyclorama that lighting designer Jason Lyons colors subtly to accent the scenes.

The minimalist tactic is mostly successful, though it reaches a baffling extremity in the streetfight between Mercutio and Tybalt, in which guts get spilled though no weapons are visible. And it takes chutzpah to stage the Balcony Scene without any disparity in elevation whatsoever. A careful pruning of Shakespeare’s script brings momentum and urgency: Romeo cries “I am fortune’s fool!”, smash to blackout, catch your breath at intermission. Yet the production is more intellectually stimulating than it is emotionally involving. Typical is the Capulet masquerade, which puts Romeo in a giant Pooh head. This adds a hilarious visual element to a familiar. It also subverts the archetypal scene of love-at-first-sight and enlarges Juliet’s character. This Romeo still falls in love with Juliet’s face, but it’s his words that she falls for first. But though the scene’s formatted (famously) as a shared sonnet, there’s little of the lovers’ emotional and linguistic coupling.

This production adds an especially adorable note
to the meet-cute lovers Romeo and Juliet
(photo: Joan Marcus) 

Alagiç’s design concept forces the dramatic burden onto the company. In delivering the verse, they find a balance between poetic recitation and dialogue. Sometimes the metaphors pop into clarity—especially those involving sex—while other times the sense is obscured. The characterizations are solid but rarely exceptional; Daphne Ruben-Vega’s Nurse is typical, seeming to work outside her comfort zone but with increasing confidence. And the production’s only outright misfire is its Friar Lawrence, Daniel Davis, who plays in the plummy, pseudo-classical style of ye old Gielgud. On the other hand, T.R. Knight (late of Los Angeles and Grey’s Anatomy) totally inhabits his role as Mercutio. He plays the gallant as a coked-up hipster, and his delivery of the Mab speech has the itchy rant of one line too many.

But this production, finally, is about its Juliet. Romeo and Juliet may make the stage reputation of Elizabeth Olsen (who won acting awards for Martha Marcy May Marlene, and who’s set to become a Hollywood starlet since getting cast in the Avengers sequel). Olsen plays Juliet as a city girl in the Manhattan mold: smart, articulate, and worldwise, possessed of a keen sense of irony that’s undercut by her teenaged volatility. She lives every moment of the character, seeming to discover both the thought and emotion that the verse discloses. Julian Cihi, as her paramour, tosses his Byronic locks with passionate intensity; his Romeo’s a bit of a naïf, old-fashioned on its own but it offsets this Juliet nicely. But it’s Olsen’s performance is that scintillates. It’s one that New York-based Shakespeare lovers shouldn’t miss.