The Problem With Billy S.

With Greenstage and the Seattle Shakespeare Company nearing the end of their respective production runs, we are about to see the last of Shakespeare for the 2011 season, and so, it is time, once again, to bring back the threadbare argument/discussion regarding whether it truly is necessary to continue revisiting the worlds created by the Bard. It's an interesting argument, at least to theatrical practitioners (again, Seattlest includes the critics in our definition of this affiliation), theater audiences remain essentially gormless on the matter -- audiences will flock to the familiar, and until taking risks becomes as much of a habit as watching what they already know, that will continue to be the case.

This leaves us with the producing companies (who seem to be pro-Shakespeare, by and large), and those practitioners, be they playwrights, actors, or critics, who aren't necessarily anti-Shakespeare, but weary of him nonetheless. In recent years, this latter camp has been represented by local playwright/rabblerouser Paul Mullin, but perhaps most notoriously by The Stranger's Brendan Kiley (again, neither of them are against Shakes in any vehement manner). Kiley merely suggested taking a five year moratorium from Shakespeare productions, you can imagine the response that this engendered from the pro-Shakes camp. Mullin characterized it thusly:

“Never! We will NEVER stop staging Shakespeare. Not for a year. Not for a month. How dare you!? You and the rest of your modern playwright ilk are not fit to wipe the soles of his pointy shoes.” The level of vituperation one encounters upon even suggesting a breather from the bard naturally calls a paraphrase of one of his more famous lines to mind, “Methinks the status quo doth protest too much.”

Given the benefits that come attached to producing Shakespeare, that reaction is understandable, but problematic. While I'm not about to suggest abandoning his work, I will say that the problem I have with the way things are is simple: It's repetitive.

It has gotten to the point where I no longer look forward to any Shakespeare production, the idiom of familiarity breeding contempt has settled. It doesn't matter whether it's done by a smaller Fringe company or an established house, inside or outside; or how talented the folks onstage or behind the scenes -- what are the joys to be found in experiencing something for the fourth or fifth time in less than ten years?

The pro- camp encourages watching the stories as if they were grand mythologies being lived out, that the richness in the material could be found from the nuances in how these archetypes act and react from production to production. Sure, but that would be valid if there were actual nuances to be found from production to production. Switching the gender, or ethnicity of a character does not nuance make; setting the play in a more modern setting, whether that setting is the Harlem Renaissance or the in the midst of the Punk scene in Los Angeles is just surface frippery if the director doesn't make that alteration mean something within the rest of the play.

Which isn't to say that all new productions aren't worthwhile; I thought Seattle Shakes' last production of Hamlet was something to write home about, for example; same with Greenstage's initial Hard Bard take on Titus Andronicus. The rest of the time, however, there's a dispiriting sameness to the productions...

I brought this up to my Seattlest colleague Omar Willey, given that conversations with him tend to be broad ranging and elucidating, often containing many a fact I had not been aware of before. For instance, he reminded me of the fact that George Bernard Shaw had a name for Theater's tendency to fawn over Shakespeare -- he called it "Bardolatry." Then, as a means of clarifying the concept further, Omar quoted Thomas Carlysle:

"Of this Shakespeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, that Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man."

Still, if you accept the notion that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of the human condition that ever lived, you have to admit that the only way to overcome this stultifying reverence is to make the productions count for something. If you're going to mount The Merchant of Venice for the umpteenth time, you better have something to say -- which, as Omar points out, is a problem endemic to Theater in general, not just Shakespeare:

"However extreme this Bardolatry is in the academic world, it is to that same degree exponentially worse within the theater world. Most people cannot even conceive of a theater without Shakespeare. I can, of course, but that simply makes me more sensitive to the failing. And since no one in the theater can conceive of a theater without Him (if you'll excuse a bit of King James), the manner in which Shakespeare plays are produced is thus indicative of the production of our plays at large."

This last is referring to something I was complaining about, specifically, the over-reliance on sophomorism to make bawdy language clearer and wring laughs out of the juxtaposition. As if the audience is comprised of 12 year old boys, and all we're thinking is "hey, that guy just made the jerk off motion, and this other one thrust his hips while talking about opening her eye! *snort*" Look, I know that Shakes was out to entertain the groundlings (members of the lower classes who went to the theater and were loud louts), but there have got to be other ways to convey this business across. Come up with something new, for pete's sake.

There are plenty of other areas where the problems of Shakespeare productions are transferred over to more contemporary ones, but I'm already a little farther afield than I intended to be; besides, I'm quite sure there will be future opportunities to address them (for all my griping, the guy's been around for over 400 years and it doesn't look like he's going anywhere).

But let us assume that a production defies the odds and avoids the pitfalls listed above, as is the case with Seattle Shakes' current production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. While the audience truly enjoyed it, as a theater practitioner, I gleaned the most joy from seeing the people (both on the boards and off) I have watched and worked with on a professional stage; I felt that everyone involved did a solid job. Otherwise, I found it pedestrian. Yeah, they switched the gender of a romantic lead, and yeah, the bawdiness was legitimately bawdy, but...meh.

And that's the the problem with most of the Shakespeare being done today: Execution that is merely sufficient is not enough. In order for the work of the Bard to truly make an impression on me, it's gonna have to wow me. This is not out of the realm of possibility, there's certainly enough talent in town to make that happen; everyone just needs to step it up.