I’ve never seen anything like it.  There we were, just about to watch Pericles compete with Cymbeline, both late-pastoral-romances quietly organising their chivalric armour and assembling their fairy tale plot elements, ready to do battle, and suddenly a wall exploded, debris flew everywhere, and a blood-drenched challenger calling himself Caius Martius, corpses at his feet and weeping widows at his back, marched into the ring and demanded a place in the contest.  Pericles and Cymbeline ran for cover, and when the other plays stepped forward to tell him the shortlist was compiled a month ago and he wasn’t on it, he killed Troilus and Cressida there and then, and danced on their grave!

We’re still in shock.  Coriolanus, that play no one knows how to pronounce (the metre varies but it should be ko-ree-OH-li-niss ninety percent of the time, even if you’ve always thought it was ko-ree-oh-LAY-niss) and that we all just figured was even more boring than King John, turns out to be really exciting and interesting.  I haven’t read it since the late-’90s and the only production I’d seen of it was hardly one to cherish – my memory was of lots of ranting and political instability.  But as the only play left in the canon which I haven’t re-read in the past year-or-so (aside from Henry VIII, which I have never read in the hope that I can have one true experience of seeing a Shakespeare play in the theatre without knowing what’s going to happen), I figured I’d just read the first scene to see if it’s as boring as I remembered … and what a great time I had.

Coriolanus hails from the same era as Antony and Cleopatra and Timon of Athens as a somewhere-around-1605-1609 play.  The Plutarch heritage and the huge Roman content never allowed me to consider it as a development of the ideas in King Lear and Timon, but if I can claim on this ’blog that Measure For Measure, All’s Well That Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida are different versions of the same play, then I think the same applies here: Coriolanus deals with what is usually my absolute favourite sort of story, best typified in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, Durrenmatt’s The Visit and the Lars von Trier film Dogville – what happens when the most popular guy/girl in town suddenly becomes the most hated guy/girl in town? what happens when you’re so blinded by flattery that you can’t see what people really think of you? what happens to a city/town when its residents embrace mob mentality?

He’s not a nice guy.  He’s arrogant and proud and at the start of the play the angry mob go from hating him to loving him when he is re-surnamed Coriolanus after his impossible one-man-against-thousands victory at Corioles, where he defeats Tullus Aufidius and the Volscians for the umpteenth time.  He doesn’t want to be made consul but gives in to the peoples’ demands and stands for election … but scheming tribunes make the crowd believe Coriolanus is mocking them, so they change their minds and, rather than beg for the title he never wanted, he tells them they don’t deserve all the victories he has won for them.  When they try to banish him, he retorts, “No, I’m banishing you!” and turns his back on Rome, joining with Aufidius and the Volscians, who are about to launch yet another attack under the logic that “the fittest time to corrupt a man’s wife is when she’s fallen out with her husband” (!).  Aufidius welcomes his greatest foe as a brother, and in an echo of Timon’s contempt and hatred for his former city, Coriolanus refuses to hear any entreaties for peace from his former allies and friends in Rome (the scene where he dismisses Menenius, the nearest thing he has to a father, with a cold simple “Away” that would make Prince Hal look like Elmo, is fantastic).  But Aufidius is easily jealous at how much regard the rest of the Volsces suddenly accord Coriolanus, and his hatred is further fuelled when, on the verge of war, Coriolanus’ resolve and hardness is completely broken by the chastisement of his mother and he weeps and seeks peace between both armies.  While Coriolanus’ wife and mother and all the people of Rome await his homecoming as the great unifier of the Romans and the Volsces, Aufidius and his conspirators murder Coriolanus.

It’s unrelenting, epic, dense and bloody and Coriolanus makes even the proudest characters in the rest of the canon look humble.  How it would fare as a small-scale touring show remains to be seen, but there’s ample scope for all sorts of cunning political analogy and you’d have to find a way of making it intimate and naturalist, because Spartacus-esque battle scene after battle scene wouldn’t be interesting.  And its crowd scenes are much more tricky and sophisticated than Julius Caesar’s – it’s not a play that I think would be necessarily fun for actors or audience, but would be of immense value nonetheless.

But what an unexpected game-changer!  We’re currently all hiding in the corner while he stands in the ring, covered in blood and refusing to budge.  As I said, he’s killed Troilus and Cressida, AND he says he’ll do the same to Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra if they’ll dare to face him!!  What could possibly happen next?!

Next time: will Pericles get to face Cymbeline?  Will Coriolanus break the Timon of Athens-Antony and Cleopatra deadlock? 

Everyone loves a sequel, which is why some of the current Bacchanals are huge proponents of Antony and Cleopatra, with the motion tabled that Jonny and Salesi play the mature version of star-crossed lovers.  It goes without saying that under this logic, Andrew reprises his Octavius Caesar, and Elle would be back as Lepidus.  You can’t quite see it reading it the way everyone could see 2 Henry VI clearly – after all, while those early Histories were probably written for the same company of actors (and therefore had continuity of character), I don’t think the same is true of the relationship between Julius Caesar (1599) and Antony and Cleopatra (around 1605).  We do know, in the same metatheatrical referencing that tells us Brutus and Caesar went on to play Hamlet and Polonius, that the same actors who played Antony and Octavius in Antony and Cleopatra went on to play Macbeth and Banquo.

I’ve always found Antony and Cleopatra, with its numerous choppy scenes, quite a weird play and my only experience of it onstage was seeing Mark Rylance play Cleopatra at the reconstructed Globe in 1999.  You know how immediate and engaging the Baz Luhrmann or Franco Zeffarelli films of Romeo and Juliet seemed when they came out?  I think it’s to do with the vitality and energy of the central couples in both films.  By contrast, the central relationship in the George Cukor film of the 1930s is laughable – not because of the age of the film but because of the age of the actors.  Who cares about the plighted love of Norma Shearer (in her 30s) and Leslie Howard (in his 40s)?  I think that’s where my unease with Antony and Cleopatra has always come from: can an audience really invest in and engage emotionally with two middle-aged lovers behaving like impetuous teenagers?  Of course, now that I’m nearer Antony in age than Romeo I have a much better understanding of what compels us to abandon notions of adulthood and keep trying to recreate or hold onto the passions of youth.  The plot: Antony and Cleopatra have a devastating row then a passionate reconciliation, Antony and Cleopatra have another devastating row and then another passionate reconciliation, Antony and Cleopatra have another devastating row and then another passionate reconciliation, Antony and Cleopatra have yet another devastating row, she sends him word she’s dead (that’ll teach him!) so he commits suicide but botches it, so they have an awkward partially-comedic scene together as he slowly bleeds to death, and then she commits suicide rather than be subjugated by Octavius Caesar.

Timon of Athens has long been one of my favourites and I like how the Arden Shakespeare website cites Coleridge calling it the stillborn twin of King Lear.  Timon of Athens hails from the same era as Antony and Cleopatra and most recent editions have put it firmly in this fashionable new Shakespeare-Middleton-collaboration-or-revision category.  I’ve always believed it’s the closest Shakespeare got to writing a play about his father: like John Shakespeare, Timon goes from being the most popular guy in town to being afraid to leave his house for fear of being arrested for debt.  Essentially, Timon keeps throwing lavish parties and being beneficent and giving to everyone he knows in the belief that as he has been generous to those in need, they’ll repay the favour when the tables are turned.  And of course, when he goes bankrupt all his supposed friends can’t or won’t help him out financially.  But the moment he announces another lavish party, they all turn up to eat and drink on him.  He denounces everyone (throwing at them the dishes full of warm water and stones he has served up – think about it!!), runs off into the wilderness, and lives in a cave for the rest of the play while Athens wars with Alcibiades.  People come to visit him in the cave because he’s found a buried pirate’s fortune, but he tells them all to get bent and dies in misery, hating mankind.  Good fun.  Timon introduces a few motifs we’ll see again and again in the later plays – Timon’s steward is the prototype for Kent in Lear, plus Camillo (The Winter’s Tale), Helicanus (Pericles), Pisanio (Cymbeline) – while also carrying on some of the ones we’re already used to – the cynical ranting Apemantus has his origins in Lucio (Measure For Measure), Parolles (All’s Well That Ends Well), Thersites (Troilus and Cressida) but has a lot in common too with the Fool (King Lear)  as being the only person speaking sense but the only person never taken seriously.  Timon is a much more internal, insular play than Lear – after all, the main character is just a guy rather than a king – but I think Timon, in being ordinary rather than royal, is a much greater Everyman than Lear and it’s always baffled me how seldom this play is performed given it’s one of the few that will never be not-relevant – it’s up there with Othello in its immediacy of subject matter and examination of the most basic human condition.

Could these be the two most evenly-matched plays of the competition so far?

Genre: both tragedies, so evenly matched.

Poetry: Enobarbus has some good bits in Antony and Cleopatra but nothing your random person on the street could cite if asked.  Evenly matched.

Obscurity: Antony and Cleopatra gets done occasionally in NZ – there hasn’t been one in Wellington for a long long time though – while Timon of Athens has never had a proper professional production (I remember once being told about a student version in Palmerston North but that seems unlikely!).  But at least people might have heard of Antony and Cleopatra.  Ten points to Antony and Cleopatra!

Length: Antony and Cleopatra is one of the longest plays in the canon and was three-and-a-half hours the one time I saw it staged; Timon of Athens is one of the shortest plays in the canon.  Ten points to Timon! (although it must be noted that we’re not averse to cutting)

Ensemble: Antony and Cleopatra has two title characters and clear sets of people on both the Egyptian and Roman sides of the play; Timon of Athens centres around one title character with everyone else working in relation to that character, so it’s a case of clear ensemble play versus star vehicle.  Ten points to Antony and Cleopatra!

Location: Antony and Cleopatra jumps between Rome and Egypt, land and sea, all over the place at such breathtaking speed that it’s very hard to know where we are or whose side is whose from moment to moment.  Timon of Athens is a nice clear citysetting for Acts I-III, forest setting for Acts IV and V.  Ten points to Timon!

Women’s roles: Antony and Cleopatra has, of course, the Queen of Egypt, but also her attendants Charmian and Iras who have substantial roles, and Caesar’s sister Octavia who becomes Antony’s wife partway through the play.  Timon of Athens, on the other hand, has a couple of nameless whores who dance at a party and then later visit him in his cave.  Ten points to Antony and Cleopatra! (although it must be noted that many of the characters, even Timon, could easily be played by/as women)

Other notable characters: Antony and Cleopatra has the famous Enobarbus, a follower of Antony’s who loses faith in his general and runs off back to Rome and is then wracked with shame and guilt when Antony sends all of his riches and fortunes back after him; Antony also has a lot of posturing potential in Octavius Caesar and Pompey.  Timon of Athens has the vitriolic Apemantus who I’m afraid eats Enobarbus for breakfast and then wears his skeleton as a suit; it also has Alcibiades who postures as well as Caesar or Pompey; Timon’s Steward is a beautifully empathetic character and while a lot of the other characters in Timon don’t have a fleshed out backstory, they all have a massively clear thematic and moral function and are the canvas for some great acting.  Ten points to Timon!

Critical favour: I have it on record that Antony and Cleopatra is the favourite Shakespeare play of at least one Wellington theatre reviewer, whereas no one has ever asked when o when will The Bacchanals please perform Timon of Athens before.  So we’d be hopefully guaranteed one favourable review on purely personal-preference if we went for the former over the latter.  Ten points to Antony and Cleopatra!

Immediacy of subject matter & relevance to Wellington in the here and now: oh come on.  Terry Serepisos loses all his money and property, then ends up living on Courtenay Place wearing a blanket?  Ten points to Timon!!!

THE VERDICT: we don’t need the various bits of categorisation to continue for you to see where this is going, do we?  In a shocking twist to the competition, David is declaring A TIE!  Antony and Cleopatra and Timon of Athens are polarised in many cases, but in a weighing of pros and cons it’s impossible to determine which play is the winner since they both have as much going for them as they have against them.  And looking at our other two current semi-finalists: I think All’s Well That Ends Well could hold its own against either of these two, but Troilus and Cressida gets its arse kicked by Timon and Apemantus while Antony and Cleopatra shag using its corpse as a pillow (there’s a Shakespearean image for you, or at least something that’ll increase our search engine traffic!).  BOTH PLAYS go through to the next round!

Next time: two supposedly similarly-matched late Romances exchange blows.  But when you think carefully about it, does Cymbeline really stand any chance against Pericles, one of the canon’s least-suspected but most enduring plays?  Watch and see, if you dare!!

Edward III has only been seriously included in the ‘legitimate’ Shakespeare canon for little more than a decade even though, depending on your stance on authorship theory, it has as much right to be there as 1 Henry VI, Pericles or even Macbeth.  I was very excited, as a champion of the lesser-known plays and fan of the Histories, by the New Cambridge edition of the late 1990s but haven’t really ever returned to the play in detail.  Having much more stylistic knowledge now than I did then makes revisiting Edward III an interesting experience – as with 1 Henry VI in 2009 and re-reading The Two Boring—sorry, Noble—Kinsmen and Sir Thomas More this year, I found myself pretty certain I knew which bits were Shakespeare’s contributions.  The New Cambridge says Edward III can’t be any later in composition than 1592-3 which fits with similar theories of 1 Henry VI as a jointly-authored-by-several-guys-project in terms of where Shakespeare’s early career was at.  The presence of the historic Edward looms large through the other Histories – in my 2009 Summer Shakespeare production of Henry V we had a special Edward III ‘salute’ which everyone onstage performed every time his name was mentioned (and it carried over to our production of 1 Henry VI later that year).

As well as the stylistic similarities, Edward III is closest for me to 1 Henry VI in its random episodic nature and that most of its episodes are based on historic events that, while recent and immediate and important to its original audience, haven’t necessarily gone down in the annals as being things that are common knowledge today.  At the start of the play, Edward listens to justification of a claim to France on his mother’s side just at the point that he can’t be bothered paying France the tributes they demand of him, so invades France while also dealing with a Scottish invasion at home.  Much of the first two acts deal with Edward’s sudden falling in love with the Countess of Salisbury and his battles with his conscience as she both bewitches him and resists his advances.  At the end of a lengthy scene akin to Richard wooing Anne in Richard III, the Countess offers Edward two daggers, says, “I’ll give in to you so long as you go and stab your wife with this knife, while I stab my husband with the other,” Edward suddenly realises the extent to which he has swayed from morality and repents.  The rest of the play features battle after battle as French territory is captured, lost and re-captured; the emotional climax sees Edward receive and process the news that his son Prince Edward has been killed, only to have Prince Edward then arrive victorious, having subdued the French in the face of impossible odds.

Pros: there’s NEVER been a production of it in New Zealand so we’d have a nice publicity angle; the verse is simple and direct and there are some great passages; the Act Two scenes between Edward and the Countess are really strong and compelling; like many of the other Histories the play defies genre constantly.  Also, doing Edward III would be the excuse to do a LOT of fun research and investigation – any play based on real events is always rewarding in that sense.

Cons: there’s a lot of talking and posturing; most of the events and incidents in the play are not particularly relevant or interesting to a modern audience (the battles of Bosworth Field or Agincourt, for example, turned out to be game-changing historic events audiences today have heard of; almost nothing in Edward III is going to jog the memory unless you’ve actually been to Calais); a play this obscure could be a really hard sell.

Troilus and Cressida, like Measure For Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well, hails from the early 17th century when Shakespeare’s creative output was huge but stifled by an 18-month theatre closure.  It’s a much simpler play than it looks: Cressida keeps resisting the advances of Troilus, telling him (and her uncle Pandarus, who keeps soliciting on Troilus’ behalf) she’s not interested but then confessing to us in soliloquy that she does really like him but a) men ditch you once they’ve had you and b) we’re in the middle of an epic war; I could be sold to the Greeks tomorrow!  Finally in Act Three she concedes but no sooner have they left the stage to consummate the relationship than sure enough, Cressida is sold to the Greeks as ransom for the return of a Troyan prisoner.  Selfish impetuous Troilus makes her swear an unfair oath of eternal faithfulness which she is forced to break because she has to take up with Diomedes for protection from the dozens of other Grecian generals who are all over her, pawing and kissing her, from the moment she arrives in the Greek camp.  In a scene reminiscent of Othello IV.ii, Troilus spies on her, mishearing and misinterpreting everything she says to Diomedes as evidence of her falseness.

What complicates Troilus and Cressida is that 1. the relationship of the title characters is only a tiny portion of what’s one of the longest plays in the canon and 2. that what in all other versions of the story is the socio-political background, i.e. the siege of Troy by the Greeks, takes up the bulk of the play.  Even when he’s presenting both sides fairly, Shakespeare still usually chooses a side – i.e. in Henry V the French are not portrayed as out and out villains, nor are the English thoroughly sympathetic, but it’s clear amidst moral ambiguity that Henry is the play’s hero and the English the play’s victors – but part of the problem with Troilus and Cressida is that both sides are equally right, equally wrong, equally stubborn and equally entitled.  (This was part of what made 2003’s Toi Whakaari production, set during the Maori land wars with the Greeks as colonising English, so dissatisfying to me – it applied a clear right versus wrong approach in terms of oppressed minority versus conquering colonists to a play that’s meant to be morally ambiguous; I really hope the upcoming International Arts Festival version of the play is going to steer clear of such simplification.)  For me the first few scenes of Troilus and Cressida are really straightforward and exciting and direct, but as soon as we get to the first scene in the Grecian camp and what we think is going to be the subplot ends up hijacking the lion’s share of the play, it gets convoluted for me and confusing.

Pros: every single character is distinct and exciting.  Cressida for me is not the unfaithful harlot Troilus accuses her of being, but up there with Isabella and Helena as an unfairly wronged heroine.  Troilus is the first in a series of heroes who are both identification points for the audience but also irredeemably misogynistic; Ulysses has some of the finest passages in Shakespeare; Thersites has some of the finest bile and vitriol in the whole of Shakespeare; there’s great comedy in Pandarus, and it struck me this time around that all the Ajax Hector Achilles Patroclus etc. stuff is potentially very funny also; and in the same sort of genre defying as the Histories, it’s balanced with the prophecies of Cassandra, the very reasoned arguments for not returning Helen to the Greeks, and the rawness and fury of Troilus’ response in the final scene to the savagery of the Greeks’ treatment of Hector and then his rejection of Pandarus.

Cons: it’s really long; there’s already a production of it (albeit in Te Reo) scheduled to hit Wellington early next year and while there might be merit in seeing the ‘proper’ play rendered in English as a balance there are also huge pitfalls; the play’s cynicism and bleak conclusion aren’t necessarily what you’d want to send an audience out into a winter night with afterwards.

THE VERDICT: both plays are equally problematic but for different reasons.  However if it’s a battle for the greater good, then Edward III is not bringing a lot to the fight.  One really strong sequence of scenes involving Edward III and the Countess of Salisbury aren’t enough to defeat the military might of the combined Greek and Troyan forces, however weird and uneven and cynical some bits of Troilus and Cressida are.  But which is the greater risk: a play no one’s seen or heard of, versus a play there’ll have already been one version of in Wellington in 2012 already?  In all likeliness neither play probably has the hardware or weaponry to defeat many of the others in the game, but if it were me in the ring about to bitch-fight Much Ado About Nothing or The Merchant of Venice, I’d want to think I at least stood a chance of scoring a couple of points, or failing that to know I was being pulverised by a brother than some illegitimate half-sibling conceived in an alley while drunk.  The winner?  Sorry folks, it has to be Troilus and Cressida!

Next time: Round three – can the company’s favoured shortlist play (Antony and Cleopatra) beat out the company’s director’s favoured shortlist play (Timon of Athens)?  A Roman cheating on his wife with an Egyptian goes ten rounds with the canon’s greatest misanthrope as the battle continues.  See you there!

Avid regular readers (come on, there are dozens of you, admit it!) will have seen in the last post we hypothesized a number of possible scenarios for The Bacchanals’ activity in 2012.  Other People’s Wars opens on April 17 at BATS (why don’t you e-mail them on book@bats.co.nz and try and book now?!  Go on, it’d be hilarious!), David is hard at work on a new text of The Clouds as you read this (hard at work = drunk in the bath with a book), and the reverse-gender Importance of Being Earnest virtually plays itself, so consider those both a go also.  But we’re really keen, after the sublime fun of Julius Caesar, to do another church hall/community centre touring Shakespeare, probably around May/June, but narrowing them down is hard because not every play is an ideal contender.

The requirements are that it be a) low tech, i.e. something that doesn’t need more prop/set items than can be comfortably shoved into a car; b) a decent ensemble piece, or at least a piece where everyone gets one decent role (yeah, Julius Caesar didn’t exactly fulfil that brief, but hey, it had the fun crowd scenes!); c) a tolerable length, i.e. two and a half hours max, as opposed to three plus!  Additional desired (but not essential) qualities are that it be a play saying something significant and pertinent about the world at this very moment (well, it’s a given that almost every Shakespeare play does that, but by example: Julius Caesar was always going to be more relevant to Wellington in November 2012 than, say, As You Like It) so we’re looking not so much for the timeless as the topical; it’d be good to have a play that hasn’t been staged in Wellington recently (so no Love’s Labour’s Lost) or won’t be in the International Arts Festival (that said, Troilus and Cressida’s on the shortlist!); and it’d be nice to have a play with decent female roles.

The current shortlist comprises TEN PLAYS, and over the next few weeks (as David re-reads them all with fresh eyes!) we’ll be loosing them on each other, one-on-one, and the play that emerges from each round with its opponent a savaged bloody heap on the floor of the ring will carry on victorious to the next round – the next round being that we’ll read it aloud as a company to see what we think!

ROUND ONE: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL VERSUS KING JOHN!

All’s Well That Ends Well hails from somewhere around 1602-4, written during a lengthy period of theatre closure due to plague.  It’s labelled a ‘Problem Play’ these days and grouped with Measure For Measure and Troilus and Cressida.  The misconception is that ‘Problem Play’ means it’s problematic but in fact this is a 19th-century term (popular in terms of describing the works of Shaw and those other lofty long-winded Victorian dramatists) meaning that the plays raise particular moral dilemmas and questions.  I’ve always seen them, in my grand theory of Shakespeare as an evolutionary dramatist continually refining the same story, character and thematic ideas, as a trilogy: All’s Well is the first attempt, Measure is the refinement of the ideas, and then Troilus is the subversion.  Helena, Isabella and Cressida are all versions of the same unjustly-wronged-by-men women; Bertram, Claudio and Troilus all versions of the same petulant young anti-hero; Parolles, Lucio and Thersites all versions of the same slandering braggart; and the King in All’s Well, the Duke in Measure and Pandarus in Troilus all versions of the same stage-managerial arch-manipulator.

In All’s Well, the orphaned Helena, though lowly-born and female, possesses the medical knowledge that cures the French King of a fatal disease and in recompense he offers her any husband she wishes regardless of class barrier.  She chooses Bertram but he is repulsed at the match, enforced by the King, and runs off to Italy on their wedding night saying “’Til I have no wife I have nothing in France”, telling Helena that until she can get the ring off his finger and prove their marriage consummated, he’ll never acknowledge her as his wife.  Poor Helena takes all the blame on herself for not being good enough to be worthy Bertram’s love, fakes her own death, follows him to Italy and, in a dry run of the same device used in Measure For Measure, employs a ‘bed-trick’ whereby Bertram thinks he’s sleeping with a hot young Italian virgin, but in fact is sleeping with Helena.  The King unravels all the tangled plot elements, Bertram is forced to admit Helena as his wife, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Pros: Strong female roles in Helena, the Countess of Rossillion and Diana; the play has a really lovely pre-Cymbeline fairy tale quality balanced with a post-Twelfth Night melancholy; the subplot involving the gulling of Parolles has a bitterness to it which makes it more possible for us to sympathise with him than we do Lucio in Measure; the ‘public’ scenes overseen by the King are really strong; and the political/martial elements of the plot are straightforward and undistracting rather than convoluted.

Cons: While nicely morally ambiguous, some parts of the play seem a little simplistic/crude compared to their Measure For Measure cousins; the Clown is pretty weak (Lavatch, which I presume is meant to be a variant of La Vache – his name is The Cow!); it’d be a challenge to make Bertram seem a nice guy to 21st century audiences; and little in the way of great poetry or memorable lines.

King John is a hard one to date.  In the 1990s I liked Honigmann’s theory that the anonymous 1591 play The Troublesome Raigne of Iohn King of England was not the source for but in fact a Bad Quarto of Shakespeare’s play, putting it in the late-1580s as one of Shakespeare’s earliest works.  In the intervening years, my since-developed biographical theory of the trajectory of Shakespeare’s chronology has seen me side with the scholars who put it in 1596, making its attitude to dead sons stem from the death of Shakespeare’s own son that same year.  If it’s from Shakespeare’s first phase of playwriting – from his arrival in London in the late-1580s to the formation of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594 – then those early years become very very full (Errors, Two Gents, Shrew, Edward III, Titus Andronicus, the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III at the very least); if it’s from 1596 then it’s the only Shakespeare play of the pre-Globe Lord Chamberlain’s Men that was never published in his lifetime (the 16 plays that appeared for the first time in the 1623 Folio are all either pre-1594 when company allegiance and ownership of playbooks changed regularly, or post-1599 when Shakespeare’s company kept much tighter control over their product).  I thought, then, I’d be able to determine stylistically where it fell … but re-reading it this week for the first time in 15 years, I can’t decide because, well, it’s boring as hell.  I’d thought my opinion tainted by the hugely unpleasant time I had working on the 1997 Summer Shakespeare (‘King John In The Dell Is Dull’ was the Dominion review’s headline), but reading it with those memories long-distant hasn’t done anything to improve it.

King John, refusing to acknowledge his nephew Arthur as rightful heir to the throne of England, leads an army against King Philip of France, under whose care Arthur and his mother Constance reside.  After many long speeches, John and Philip agree that instead of fighting, they’ll marry Philip’s son Lewis to John’s niece Blanche, but immediately after the wedding John gets excommunicated for refusing to appoint the Pope’s preferred candidate as Archbishop of Canterbury, France sides with Rome and there is much fighting.  John’s forces win and take Arthur prisoner; John employs Hubert to kill Arthur by blinding him but Hubert relents at the last minute; John has a change of heart and is relieved; but then Arthur falls from the battlements of the castle and dies anyway.  Act Five sees more England vs. France fighting while John dies, poisoned by an offstage monk.  The play’s most famous character is Philip the Bastard, the Geordie illegitimate child of Lady Faulconbridge and Richard the Lionheart, who stands in the background of the crowd scenes and army stand-offs being a smartarse, gets several soliloquies, and finishes the play with a rousing patriotic nationalistic speech.

Pros: the scene where Hubert fails to murder Arthur is great – “Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?” – and Constance has some lovely speeches – “Grief fills the room up of my absent child”.  Plenty of nice epic rhetoric and triple isocolons aplenty.

Cons: Nice epic rhetoric and triple isocolons make for good reading, but they don’t necessarily make for a great play.  I’d remembered the Bastard as being a great character but he actually comes across as a thug and bully, and his soliloquies make him seem simple, not complex.  I think the only way to adequately deal with King John is to treat it as the 1997 Summer Shakespeare did: create a production of visual spectacle, full of vivid costumes and set-pieces, giant battle scenes, music, pyrotechnics and lighting effects, to disguise the fact that as a text it is excruciatingly boring.

THE VERDICT: do vivid costumes and set pieces, giant battle scenes, music, pyrotechnics and lighting effects to disguise a boring text sound like a Bacchanals show to you?  Let’s go for moral ambiguity and bed-tricks over hot-poker-in-the-eleven-year-old’s-eyes.  All’s Well That Ends Well defeats King John easily and goes through to Round Two, while King John sinks back into obscurity.  Sorry John, I’ll take you off the shelf again in another 15!

Next time: Round Two – Edward III versus Troilus and Cressida!  Can the Black Prince defeat the mighty Ajax?  Which is seedier – Troilus’ seduction of Cressida or Edward’s seduction of the Countess of Salisbury?  Place your bets now!

Huge congratulations from all of us here at the bunker to the brilliant Dean Parker for winning the Outstanding New NZ Play award for Slouching Toward Bethlehem on Sunday night, and to the magnificent Phil Grieve for his Outstanding Performance Accolade for his portrayal of Muldoon.  As for the other nominees, David and Alex … well, as Homer Simpson would say, “Who wants to eat a loser?”  Here’s a blurry picture of Phil not as Muldoon but backstage as Caesar before the final performance of Julius Caesar in the Pit:

Yeah, all our plans to update the ‘blog daily during Julius Caesar went out the window after week one.  What can we tell you?  It all seems so far in the past now! 

It was good fun performing at the Tararua Tramping Clubrooms where we rehearsed Yours Truly and I.D. in 2005, Hamlet in 2006 and King Lear in 2007.  Sorry about the terrible giggles we all got when Salesi crashed that handshake in the final act.  Here’s a photo of us just before the show started.  Look at all those chucks!

Ahh, how we love the Island Bay Community Centre.  David bought a banjo that day and tried to play it at the interval.  And we had a nice drink at a pub afterwards.  Does this photo imply a blossoming romance?

We enjoyed returning to the Newtown Community Centre where David once directed The Tempest (when he was 19), played Starveling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (when he was 11) and saw his old dad (who would have been 80 this month!!!!) in numerous amateur shows, most notably as an ugly sister in Cindarella, when he was very very young.  Here’s an atmospheric backstage photo from Newtown.  Can you identify the actors?? 

New venue the Hataitai Bowling Club was a strong contender for favourite venue of the tour.  Really cosy and intimate, and a lovely sunny evening.  Look at how incongrous our stuff looked in there!

The following night we enjoyed a gale that threatened to take the roof off of The Long Hall in Roseneath – being so exposed to the elements in such a brilliant space made for a pretty weird show with a shouty first half, but it’s an amazing space and we’ll be back!  Elle is enjoying the wind here as we wait for keys to the venue, but I don’t think Jean’s having such a great time.

The Khandallah Town Hall!  With its upper level!  Hooray!

The Vogelmorn Hall in Brooklyn on election night … the show was fun even if the election was not so great.  You tried your best Phil & Annette, but seriously: the cast of Julius Caesar stood a better chance of leading Labour to victory than anyone in the top 20 of Labour’s list (except Jacinda.  She should be leader!  Go on!).  I could show you numerous photos of Bacchanals swearing at the telly on election night, but instead here’s Gareth and Salesi about to head home. 

Later that night Gareth fell down a bank, and Jean fell down the same bank trying to rescue him.

Ahh, the Monday night return to our spiritual home – The Pit! (you thought we were gonna say BATS, didn’t you!)  Cramming that many people into that tiny a space was pretty mad – so mad that David couldn’t take an in-focus photo (William may have some though!).  Mental mental times!

Seriously, a huge thank you to everyone who’s supported The Bacchanals in 2011 – we couldn’t have had a better year.  And it’s been a long long time since the company has felt stable and secure enough for us to promise with certainty: we’ll be back in 2012, bigger and better than ever before! (well okay, maybe not King Lear levels of bigger and better!  But still!)  Plans are afoot, plots are being laid, licences are being signed and scripts are being secretly read in rooms with drawn curtains, while hushed conversations of confidential casting plans and surprising new theatrical spaces fly through the ether, conveyed in text message and e-mail like pigeons delivering missives and then being eaten so no one can intercept the information tied to their spindly legs.  We can confirm with alacrity (well, we haven’t paid for the licence yet nor signed contract with theatre, but it’s been announced to Julius Caesar audiences so it has to be true!): Dean Parker’s adaptation of the controversial new book Other People’s Wars by Nicky Hager will open at BATS Theatre on April 17, 2012, 8pm!  There will be AT LEAST two other things next year!  And that’s not including the premieres of Paul Rothwell’s You Be The Angel I Be The Ghost or Jonny Potts’ The No Nonsense Parenting Show! (which aren’t technically Bacchanals shows, except that there are Bacchanals in them!)  A reverse-gender version of The Importance of Being Earnest you say?!  A new text of Aristophanes’ The Clouds?!  Karel Capek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, played as an expressionist melodrama?!  Charlotte Simmonds’ Making Out With Jon Toogood to be played as an anti-Young & Hungry play at the same time as Young & Hungry to expose what a crock of teen-angst self-indulgent crap most Young & Hungry plays are?!?  Tartuffe but with everyone played as characters from The Simpsons?!!? (Orgon as Homer makes sense, as does Cleante as Ned Flanders, but does that mean Tartuffe is Mr Burns, Sideshow Bob or Moe?)  Another touring Shakespeare which may or may not be All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, King John, Much Ado About Nothing, Pericles, Cymbeline, Troilus and Cressida or Antony and Cleopatra?!?! (you could vote for your preference right here right now on this ‘blog!)  A Christmas musical?!?!?!?!  It’s all too overwhelming and unbelievable.  But some of it will happen, and you read it here first!  Unless you found this ‘blog posting after the official website has been updated, or after the shows themselves have actually happened, in which case – hope you were there, and that they were great!

Next time: Official Announcements of The Bacchanals’ Exciting Programme For 2012!!!

Apologies for abject failure to update this ’blog through every day of the Julius Caesar season, but honestly, the web statistics tell me that our readership isn’t exactly skyrocketing and since no one posts comments on any of the ’blog postings, many at Bacchanals HQ (we operate from a hut deep in the jungle!) fear that regular ’blog updates are not a useful expenditure of our time and resources, not when we can be planning our counterstrike against the Tamil Tigers.  There are photos aplenty of Julius Caesar in all its guises to be painstakingly uploaded to our ’blog, website, twitter and MyFace pages, but for the interim, let’s bask in the glory of winning awards!

Last night a strong Bacchanals contingent (eight! eight of us, I tell you!) represented the company at the annual Chapman Kip theatre awards at BATS, at which we won a strong contingent of awards (six! six awards, I tell you!).  Here are the exciting results of The Bacchanals’ labours in 2011:

1. The cast of Slouching Toward Bethlehem won the Theatreview Award for Best Ensemble Acting of the Year!
2. Jean Sergent won the Award for the Best Actress to play a feisty socialist grandmother in the 1930s and a well-dressed gay man in the 1980s in a play about Robert Muldoon…ahem…of the Year!
3. The award for Best Dancing In A Play went to Robert Muldoon and Mickey Mouse in Slouching Toward Bethlehem (apparently this was a mistake and it should have gone to some dance show, but as Salesi said, it was a dance show, not a play, so it can’t win Best Dancing In A Play when it’s not a play but a dance show!  We’re keeping that award, meatbags!).
4. Hannah Nielsen-Jones won the award for Best Stage Manager of the Year for No Taste Forever!
5. Phil Grieve won the Award for Best Actor/Actress playing a Political Figure in an Election Year for his portrayal of Muldoon in Slouching Toward Bethlehem!
6. And finally, Alex Greig won the much-coveted Lifetime Achievement Award.  About time!

We won’t fare nearly so well at tomorrow night’s Chapman Tripp awards, but we’ll update you as soon as those corpses stop twitching.  Keep watching the skis!

Next time: we reveal the true origins of Fiona’s whooping cough!

What a year The Bacchanals are having!  Thanks to all who made it to the Lyall Bay show tonight – we had a GREAT night and we’re all in pretty good spirits now that theatrical award-season creeps near!  In the Chapman Kips we’re currently nominated for Best Ensemble (Slouching Toward Bethlehem), Best Actor Playing A Politician In An Election Year Play (Phil for Slouching Toward Bethlehem), Best Break-up (Jack Marshall and the National Party – STB again!), Best Stage Manager (yay Hannah Nielsen-Jones!!), Best Fight (No Taste Forever!) and the nomination for Best Line in an NZ Play – “The teapot – my arch-nemesis!” – was a rehearsal-room pitch by David which made it into the final script of Love In The Time Of Vampires!  Salesi has fared well in best cross-gender acting and best pash (Public Service Announcements) … And at the more serious highbrow end of things, the Chapman Tripps (the serious ones held in a ridiculously proper theatre space and with everyone being all full of solemnity instead of the ones held at BATS with everyone drunk and silly) feature FOUR Bacchanals-related nominations!  That’s right – Slouching Toward Bethlehem has been nominated for Outstanding New New Zealand Play, Alex has been nominated in the Outstanding Performance/Actor of the Year category (for his performance in The Engine Room, but still, he’s ours really!), as has Phil for his performance in Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and David has been nominated for Director of the Year!

Yeah, who cares about awards?  What you really want is the gossip on the Women Of The Bacchanals, as promised earlier in the week.  This isn’t meant to be a sexist or offensive post.  It’s more to make the point that, well, some of Shakespeare’s plays aren’t that kind to women and the women in Julius Caesar fare fairly crappily.  And I’m sure I speak on behalf of the rest of the Men Of The Bacchanals (yep, those with long memories may recall that was the planned title for our 2006 calendar, conceived on a late night in the winter of 2005 as Josh, James, Alex, Hadleigh and David drank port around the fire in a hotel in Whangarei.  Ah, the glory days!) when I say it grieves me a little every time we perform Julius Caesar that such a brilliant array of female actors get such a raw deal in this play.

Jean plays an assortment of roles originally written for men and also sings before the show starts.  Jean – an Aries – works at the War Memorial, at the BATS box office, has an amazing cat and an amazing voice.  Brianne gets to play Calphurnia which means she has one scene in which her husband mocks her publicly for being barren, and then one scene where he ignores her and goes to work anyway.  In real life, Bri – a Pisces – is a brilliant publicist (she is single-handedly responsible for the number of times we managed to get Muldoon mentioned in The Dominion Post this year) and also has an amazing singing voice.  Kirsty was a slave to the evil corporation known as Ticketek for a long time, but has escaped them and now works at the Film Archive.  Kirsty – a Capricorn – is tall and thin beyond belief, speaks German, and her belching can be heard in the deepest forests of the Amazon.  She also gets to play an assortment of roles written for men.  Her eyes aren’t really that red; it’s all the fault of Photoshop!

Dasha had an unpleasant experience recently where, during an exam (Dasha – a Taurus – studies Law & Psychology when she isn’t working at the Pit or the BATS box office) someone copied all her answers, so the examiners removed them both from the exam and made them sit the exam again.  Dasha passed and the cheater was kicked out of the course!  In Julius Caesar Dasha plays a bunch of roles written for boys, and has the smallest line count of the whole cast.

Elle enjoys eating.  We have plenty of file photographs of her eating, but thought we’d put this one in instead (taken, no doubt, just after she’d been eating).  Elle – a Capricorn – works as a dental assistant and gets to play Portia in Julius Caesar, meaning that like Brianne she gets ignored by her husband in her couple of substantial scenes, and then she commits suicide offstage.

So there you have it!  Jean, Bri, Dasha, Kirsty, Elle – we (that is, Alex, Andrew, Benjamin, David, Phil, Salesi, William and Jonny) would like to say, YOU ARE GREAT and sorry the play has such crap women’s roles.  Next time we’ll do a play that serves you better!

Next time: Julius Caesar hits the Tararua Tramping Clubrooms – don’t miss it!

On Wednesday 16 November (happy birthday Mark!) we’ll be at St Jude’s, Freyberg Street, Lyall Bay at 7pm!

On Friday 18 November we’re looking forward to a crazy rocking night in the mighty Tararua Tramping Clubrooms, on Moncrieff Street, Mount Victoria at 7pm – our first time there since rehearsals for King Lear in 2007.  It’s a great space – wonderful and central – and if you’re lucky, we’ll be drinking at The Pit just down the road by 10pm!

On Saturday 19 November we’ll celebrate the birthday of the beautiful brilliant Fiona McNamara by giving the show of our lives in the cosy confines of the Island Bay Community Centre at 7pm!

On Monday 21 November we’ll be at the Newtown Community Centre at 7pm.  A long long heritage with this space – David directed an amateur production of The Tempest there in 1995, performed his first Shakespeare there as an 11 year-old in 1986, and used to see his old dad playing various roles in various amateur shows there in the late ’70s and early ’80s – so we’re looking forward to a good night.

On Tuesday 22 November we’ll be at the Hataitai Bowling Club at 7pm.  Clearly not the Labour stronghold we thought it was, given our posters seem to be being ripped down (admit it, Chris F!), but it’s the home suburb of David and Phil so we’re glad to be able to walk to work!  And what a day – director Peter Hall turns 81, Terry Gilliam turns 71 and Michael K Williams (Omar from The Wire!) turns 45!

On Wednesday 23 November we’re REALLY looking forward to the unique, intimate and atmospheric environment of The Long Hall in Roseneath – 13b Maida Vale Road – and hoping it doesn’t rain or the roof takes off in the wind!  7pm!

We don’t currently have a show on 24 November, but then Beatles birthdays are kinda like religious holidays for some of us. (What do you mean, Pete Best doesn’t count?!  Shame on you!)

On Friday 25 November we’ll be at the Khandallah Town Hall at 7pm! Always fun to venture into the north – do they still have that giant wall to keep out the wildlings?

On Saturday 26 November we’ll be doing a special Election Night show at the Vogelmorn Hall in Brooklyn.  I know, I know, you’d rather be at home watching the Election – but please please please come on down; the election is the whole reason we decided to do this show so we’d love you to be there!!

On Monday 28 November we’ll be at The Pit at BATS.  We know how the assassination will work, but god knows where all the corpses will go in Act V!  But we’ll make it work, somehow!

I know, I know, you were promised a ’blog entry on the women of The Bacchanals and how great they are.  Soon!  Soooooon!!  But in the interim, here’s a picture of Jean, to get things started:

Next time: More Stuff!  More Photos!  More Excitement!  Chapman Kip nominations! Chapman Tripp nominations! And much much more!

All is well!  Caesar died as expected (although just after the kids who had to be in bed by 8pm had gone home), Rome fell into civil war but was then re-united by the powers of the Triumvirate and David remembered whilst dead the amazing piece of direction he’d forgotten to give before the show that would make the last three scenes SO much clearer.  Next time! (it’s about the traffic of hats between characters)  Thanks to all the folk in Makara who turned out tonight – we had a great time with you guys!

The theme of tonight’s post was going to be ‘The Women Of The Bacchanals’ (or The Bacchae if you wanna get classical!) in honour of Facebook allegations that some of the women in the show are quite hot (it’s a lie – they ALL are).  We even prepped a series of arty photos which would accompany a blog-essay on the many ways in which Brianne, Dasha, Elle, Kirsty and Jean are the most smart, intelligent, funny, beautiful, kickarse women you could possibly have in a production of Julius Caesar.  But it’s 2am and we can’t be arsed uploading all the photos tonight.  (Later in the week when I can sponge off free wireless on campus!!)

Instead, here’s a photo of our favourite letterbox in Makara:

In other news today it was confirmed that we will indeed be performing in The Pit at BATS on Monday 28 November – it’ll be pretty insanely cramped but we’re really looking forward to it!  Otherwise, we’ll see you all at St Jude’s on Freyberg Street, Lyall Bay, this Wednesday the 16th at 7pm!!

Next time: more photos! more venues! as Julius Caesar continues!

Thanks to everyone who made it to St Peter’s Hall in Paekakariki last night for the first performance of Julius Caesar.  We had a great time and are looking forward to seeing folk at the Makara Community Hall tomorrow (Monday!) at 7pm!  While we promised a picture of blurry rehearsal room corpses, I thought first you might like to see some of the cast and some of the audience with a wonderful CAKE they baked for us – that’s right, koha doesn’t mean give us cash.  The Bacchanals will happily accept baking, fresh fruit and vegetables, gluten-free bread and catfood! 

Here too is the promised picture of corpses.  Not as interesting as a cake, we know!

Well how about this: the endgame of the second game in what promises to be a season-long chess tournament between David and Dasha.  So far the score stands at two victories to Dasha.  Can you see where David went wrong?  Answers on the back of a postcard!

Next time: will the Makara audience bake us an even bigger cake?  Visit us again to find out!  Plus, more confirmed venues!!!