Back to Shakespeare

We went to see The Winter's Tale this evening, another filmed London stage play. It was broadcast live to Europe and we saw it on a bit of a delay.

As we were leaving, some people sitting around us said, in our general direction, "If you ever get a chance, tell us what that was all about!" They were laughing but they seemed to imply they'd had a hard time following it.

Dan and I enjoyed it. I had a short text exchange with William during intermission and he said, "How's the play, Mum?" I said, "It's intense Shakespeare."

And it was. You really needed to focus; if your mind wandered, you were in danger of losing the thread.

The acting was superb. A Reuters story said this:

Her cutting words were written by William Shakespeare, but the withering stare the straight-talking Paulina focuses on co-star Kenneth Branagh's insanely jealous King Leontes in a new production of "The Winter's Tale" is pure Judi Dench.

Dench's stare, at the end of the first half, has had audiences sitting on the edge of their seats since the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company's production of Shakespeare's late-life portrait of the wreckage wrought by jealousy opened this month.

It is a "moment I shall long remember," Guardian critic Michael Billington wrote.

The play is thought to be one of Shakespeare's later works and was first performed in 1611. It's not performed as often as many of his other works but it's getting a warm reception in London right now.

During intermission, we were amused by a recitation of Bernard Levin's Shakespearean quotes. Here it is although it's probably more fun to listen to than to read yourself.

On Quoting Shakespeare

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me,"

you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning,

you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you recall your salad days,

you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you act more in sorrow than in anger;

if your wish is father to the thought;

if your lost property has vanished into thin air,

you are quoting Shakespeare;

if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy,

if you have played fast and loose,

if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle,

if you have knitted your brows,

made a virtue of necessity,

insisted on fair play,

slept not one wink,

stood on ceremony,

danced attendance (on your lord and master),

laughed yourself into stitches,

had short shrift,

cold comfort or too much of a good thing,

if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise

why, be that as it may,

the more fool you,

for it is a foregone conclusion that

you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare;

if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage,

if you think it is high time and that is the long and short of it,

if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out

even if it involves your own flesh and blood,

if you lie low 'till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play,

if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason,

then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head)

you are quoting Shakespeare;

even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing,

if you wish I was dead as a door-nail,

if you think I am an eyesore,

a laughing stock,

the devil incarnate,

a stony-hearted villain,

bloody-minded

or a blinking idiot,

then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for

you are quoting Shakespeare.

All the world's a stage

Not everyone knows that one of my life’s regrets is that I’ve never had a career in the theatre.

In the Fall of 1967, I was living in Montreal and I applied to the National Theatre School. Everything about the process of application was outside my experience but I bravely followed through.

To my great surprise, the school phoned me. During the course of a nice conversation, the woman who phoned told me kindly that she liked my letter but that I was considered too old for the acting program. I was 24. She told me it was rare for someone of my age to be admitted but if I truly thought I was exceptionally talented, she would try to get me in for an audition.

Well. . . my mother had told me I could do anything – of course, as most of our mothers told us – and I had won two awards for acting in high school. (One was for Rise and Shine, the other for Still Stands the House.) I clearly didn’t have the confidence though because I thanked her and moved on.

Years later, I was out of work and living in Fredericton. A position as assistant to the Communications Director at Theatre New Brunswick came up and I was interviewed by Walter Learning, then TNB’s artistic director. We knew each other as we were both close friends with the poet/playwright Alden Nowlan. Walter told me I would hate the job. It was a junior position, I would have to answer to a director who had much less experience than I and, in his opinion, I was over-qualified. He was right and I knew it even then.

I still love the theatre though and I’m happy whenever I’m a member of the audience. I enjoy it at all levels, from a high school play to the professional leagues but occasionally, there’s something that makes it memorable.

In New York a few years ago, we saw Angela Lansbury in her final Broadway performance in Blithe Spirit. It was such a thrill – I felt star-struck but she was so good at what she was doing, I had to keep reminding myself, “That’s Angela Lansbury!”

We waited at the stage door with a few hundred other people for her to appear after the show and eventually, there she was. She was so gracious and friendly – she signed everything and chatted and laughed and when it was time for her to go, miraculously, there was a car that had silently appeared out of nowhere and she was gone. No muss, no fuss.

It was, altogether, a lovely experience.

Last week, we were in the West End in London. We went to the Gielgud Theatre (even the name is thrilling) to see a current hit play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It was fun just to look around and see the differences from our theatre experiences at home.

The cheerful man sitting next to us, for example, read his book – a good-sized hard-covered book – before the play started and throughout the intermission. The family in the row in front of us – a couple with their three children – got settled in and then the husband went out and returned with glasses of wine for the two adults. Most people sitting around us had brought in drinks from the bar.

The play is hard to describe. First of all, it is excellent – winner of Olivier and Tony Awards and generally acclaimed by the critics. It’s multi-media and fast-paced with much going on and yet it’s focused and tells a moving story.

It’s the story of a 15-year-old boy who has autism or Asperger’s and who needs to find out who murdered his neighbour’s dog.

We all really enjoyed the play and, as always, the theatre experience itself added a lot to our enjoyment.

Two footnotes: For anyone who follows theatrical news of the West End, we did look into the ticket situation for Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet which opened while we were in London. Not surprisingly, we found that tickets had sold out in minutes when they went on sale a year ago. There are 30 tickets available each day for that day’s performance and people sleep on the sidewalk to get in line to try and get one. We passed on that.

But speaking of Shakespeare: a few days before our West End experience, we had walked exactly where William Shakespeare himself walked, on the 400-year-old floors of his childhood home. Why should that seem so memorable and significant? That's a story for another day.