This excellent production was forced to close by the coronavirus. The company video-recorded it, and we look forward to its dissemination to a wider audience.
Shakespeare in Love, adapted for the stage by Lee Hall, based on the screenplay by Marc Norman & Tom Stoppard. Matt Pfeiffer directs at Peoples Light, Malvern, PA through March 29, 2020.
Shakespeare In Love, on stage at Peoples Light, is a witty, action-filled and romantic treat. Matt Pfeiffer’s direction nicely balances erudition and entertainment.
The play is based on the hit movie that won the 1998 Academy Award (starring Gwyneth Paltrow and produced by Harvey Weinstein). In retrospect, many Academy voters feel that Saving Private Ryan actually deserved the prize. Truth to tell, the play has some limitations too. That’s why Pfeiffer’s sure hand was needed to mesh its elements into such a captivating experience.
The original screenplay was by Marc Norman, and Weinstein hired the playwright Tom Stoppard to improve it. Stoppard’s first major success had been with the Shakespeare-based play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and he filled the script with scrambled references to Shakespeare and other writers from that period. (“Out, damned spot!” is addressed to a pesky dog.)
The centerpiece is a young Shakespeare with writer’s block who’s trying to finish a script called Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter. A young woman who wants to act on stage named Viola (fictional, but named for Shakespeare’s heroine from Twelfth Night who disguised herself as a man). Since that’s illegal, she pretends to be a man named Kent (like the character in King Lear who disguises himself as a commoner in order to secretly serve the king.)
Author Faye Kellerman claimed that this plot was stolen from her 1989 novel The Quality of Mercy in which Shakespeare romances a Jewish woman who dresses as a man. The idea also reminds me of the 1999 play by Jeffrey Hatcher, Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which was made into a movie starring Claire Danes as the impersonator.
The stage version of Shakespeare In Love gives less attention to romance than does the movie, and more to the mechanics of theater. Instead of a conventional love story, the play is a valentine to the art of stagecraft. Pfeiffer embraces this view. He emulates Elizabethan theater by having his actors seem to improvise as they slap together costumes and props. It’s an interesting conversation with the theater practices of Shakespeare’s time, as it supposes how The Bard may have found his muse to write Romeo & Juliet.
Paige Hathaway’s set echoes this concept, extending all the way to the theater’s back and side walls and exposing the beams. Some of the action is on a balcony, suggesting the architecture of the Elizabethan era.
The plot is based on the fact that young Shakespeare was churning out plays as quickly as possible and putting them on stage with a company of actors who had little rehearsal. The play is crammed with historical references, including the idea that Shakespeare is employed as a playwright by Philip Henslowe, owner of The Rose Theatre. Because Henslowe is in debt and can’t pay his playwright, young Will talks Richard Burbage, owner of a rival theater company, into buying the play from Henslowe.
Those names are real, and so is that of Christopher Marlowe, who here is portrayed as the man who supplied Shakespeare with most of his ideas. The idea that Will was thoroughly dependent on Marlowe stretches credulity.
One of the glories of the production is the acting by a large cast of Philadelphia’s best actors, including Anthony Lawton, Mark Lazar, Stephen Novelli, Dan Hodge , Justin Jain and Melanye Finister. Making a fine company debut is Maboud Ebrahimzadeh as Marlowe, and Pax Ressler impresses with a haunting singing voice.
Sixteen performers (playing multiple roles), plus an exceptionally talented dog, swirl across the stage. Swordplay is excitingly choreographed by Eli Lynn and Erin Sheffield. Puffy and flowerful period costumes are by Olivera Gajic. Local musician Alex Bechtel composed a superb original score.
I saved the Shakespeare and Viola for last, because their chemistry leaves us desiring a bit more. Jaime Maseda is tall, dark and handsome as Shakespeare, whereas the script wants him to be pretty much an inept geek. A Gene Wilder type would be more suitable. Maseda’s delivery is energetically spontaneous while Taysha Marie Canales gives a weightier reading of her lines, which prevents the two of them from meshing perfectly.