Review: SHAKESPEARE IN THE BAR at Holden Street Theatres

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Saturday 26th September 2020.

"Present mirth hath present laughter. What's to come is still unsure." The bard has a word for everything.

When the plague struck London, Shakespeare and his company, the Lord Chancellor's Men, took to the clichéd highways and byways, finding their audiences where they might. They favoured inns, which had yards for the groundlings, and balconies for those scenes where balconies might come in handy. They had beer and wine, and closely packed friendly bodies.

I raced out of choir practice and headed straight to Butterfly Theatre's spiritual and practical home, the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton, for Shakespeare in the Bar, great wine and attractive company. Just not where I should have been. Second time lucky. Bus into town, take the 118 from Currie Street, stop 7 Manton Street and round to the Holden Street theatres. Sign in, sanitize, socialize and a glass of red at the bar.

Marc Clement and Stefanie Rossi, Bronwyn Ruciak and Benn Welford, are directed by Tony Knight under the translucent wing of Butterfly Theatre. They know deeply that 'play' and 'Play' are pretty much the same thing.

The seventeenth century Spanish playwright, Lope De Vega, remarked that all theatre needed was four trestles, four boards and two actors, and something for them to say. Butterfly Theatre had that many boards, a wooden box, and four actors. They also had the plays of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare in the Bar, the latest entertainment in the Holden Street Theatres, is a five-act presentation with prologue and epilogue, a little over an hour long, stitched together from the works of Shakespeare; songs, plays and sonnets. There are five acts, thematically chosen, Wooing, Surmising, on Ambition, Melancholy and Madness and, last act of all, Death.

The prologue is on acting, and that speech to the players by Hamlet sets a tone. "Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue." They speak with an articulate and vernacular delivery, owing nothing to Jacobi, or Gielgud, or Olivier, but everything to sense and Shakespeare.

It is so direct, so rudimentary in staging and so engaging that it could, would, and should travel widely. All your favourites are there, those sonnets, such as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments", that speech on mercy and that monologue on suicide.

The classics are well handled and Clement makes something special of Edmund's speech in Lear about illegitimacy. "God stand up for bastards."

Tony Knight is the director, but this is so clearly an ensemble performance. Three of the cast, Rossi, Clement, and Ruciak are well known around town but Benn Welford, Adelaide born and NIDA trained, is currently on furlough from the international production of The Lion King. Set down by Providence on these friendly shores, he is an impressive find indeed.

Sometimes they touch on those odd corners, a dialogue, so brief from the rarely staged Troilus and Cressida, in which she declares her love for Troilus, Benn Elford and Stefanie Rossi, young lovers, as you might expect, heading to disaster. Bronwyn Ruciak is both the mothers grieving for their children; Hermione in A Winters Tale and Constance, mother of the dead Prince Arthur in King John. Her grieving, expressed in the simplest and most affecting tones, blends into that song from The Tempest. "Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made". She is wonderful as the Hostess of the inn, recounting the death of Falstaff.

From As You Like It, yes, there is the speech about the seven ages of man, but also, in one of the subplots, the advice to to the shepherdess Phoebe not to aim above her station, to accept the love of William. "You are not for all markets." A cold gust of reality in the forest of Arden.

The classics are well-handled and Clement makes something special of Edmund's speech in Lear about illegitimacy, "God stand up for bastards".

The songs were a present for the company from Alan John, the composer, and were first heard in Bell Shakespeare productions. A sweet gift indeed.

"Our revels now have ended." Bronwyn Ruciak speaks Prospero's words, but there's always that song in Kiss Me Kate, Another Opening, Another Show.

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