'Tis but early days

Much of the Shakespeare I've seen over the years has been on television or movies. I think the very first play I saw was a tv production of Hamlet with Richard Chamberlain. All I remember thinking about that is "Dude, everyone's dead." Except I didn't say "dude" back then. I said "Man." Back then, I thought "dude" was a stupid word. I still think it's a stupid word, but everyone going around saying it all the time has finally influenced me, so now I say "dude." I wish it worked the other way. I wish I could influence people, and then they would go around saying things like "Lousy knave" and stuff like that.

Anyway, the first stage production of a Shakespeare play I saw was The Merchant of Venice at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, back in my senior year of high school. I'm pretty sure it was during the Fall semester, so that would make it 1972. I had pretty much decided by then that I was going to be an English major when I went to college, so I thought I'd get an early start by taking two English classes that year, with two brilliant English teachers: Senior English (English Lit - with Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, and all that wonderful stuff) taught by Mr Turner, and Shakespeare/Modern Novel taught by Mr Rice. I actually looked forward to going to those classes, if you can believe it. For a brief moment in my life, school (or part of it) was fun.

So, in Mr Rice's class, we went on a field trip up to San Francisco. It was very exciting. Not only were we seeing a Shakespeare play, but we got to skip all our classes. The play was a modern dress production, and back in 1972 that meant Portia and Nerissa went about in slinky, very flared pants and halter tops, and Nerissa, who was played by an African-American, had one of those huge early 70s afros. I seem to recall vertically striped bell-bottom trousers on the men, but that may just be the vestiges of some nightmare I once had.

After so many years, I don't remember too much else about the production. I have no recollection of Shylock or the trial scene at all. I recall that the laughs were played up pretty much in the non-Shylock scenes. And I remember - in fact, it's about the only concrete memory I have about the play besides the women's costumes - I remember a very affecting performance by Marsha Mason as Jessica. Her final scene with Lorenzo - "in such a night" was both shocking and moving. The scene was played more as a series of accusations one against the other, escalating in anger until they ended with Lorenzo slapping Jessica's face. The director also transposed a couple of other scenes with Jessica, and those changes, along with that very serious duet with Lorenzo, made it seem as though Jessica had been wrong to run off with him, and the one she really belong with was Launcelot. It was sad.

Most of the other plays I saw in those days were at BYU. In June 1974 I saw a wonderful production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Max Golightly. It was a very realistic production, meaning the forest really looked like a forest, and an enchanted one at that. I went and saw it twice, I liked it so much. Or maybe three times. The second time I went with my brother Bob, and to this day, every time we see each other, we break into a series of Shakespearean insults. "You bead, you puppet, you acorn!" says Bob. "You minimum of hindrance!" says I. Much better than "Dude!" (Incidentally, it's supposed to be "You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made", but I learned it wrong those many years ago, and now it's fossilized that way.)

In 1975, I saw the Reader's Digest version of The Taming of the Shrew, put on by the New York City Center Acting Company. They were touring college campuses and stopped at BYU in April of that year. It was all right. It was funny, but I don't like to see the plays cut up like that.

I believe it was early in 1976 (but it may have been 1975) that I saw my first (and one of the best versions of) Twelfth Night, directed my Marion Bentley. I saw that production twice, too, and Viola (played wonderfully by Karla Hendricks) became one of my favorite characters. Also, around the same time, I saw a graduate student production of As You Like It. I don't remember much about it, except that I enjoyed it. I have the feeling it was pretty heavily cut, too, but at the time I didn't know that play as well as I knew The Taming of the Shrew. I do recall that it was updated to 1930s Chicago, and Duke Frederick was like some gangster boss, wearing a pinstriped suit, black shirt with white tie, and a fedora. When Rosalind disguised herself as a boy, she dressed the same way.

Also in 1976, when I was back in California, I went with my friend, Wendy Carpenter, and her sister to see Othello at the ACT in San Francisco. Once again, I remember liking it, but that's about it. It'll give you an idea of how little I remember when I say that, while watching Othello on tv 20 years later, it surprised me when Desdemona got smacked in the face. I was not expecting that at all. I had to go look up the scene in the play to see if it was really that way.

Finally, when Rhonda and I went to England in 1982, we saw a production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Open Air Theatre in London. I wish we'd been able to afford seeing something when we went to Stratford, but alas, we decided against it. (I didn't know it at the time, but there was a production of All's Well That Ends Well at the RST - the one directed by Trevor Nunn, yes, the one with Harriet Walter, Peggy Ashcroft, and Cheryl Campbell - that now I would give my eye teeth to have been able to see. My only consolation is that I think they'd already left Stratford at that time. Yeah, probably they'd gone to the Barbican Center in London...but I don't want to think about that.) So, here's what I wrote in my journal at the time about Shrew:

"The Taming of the Shrew was pretty darn good. They did it in the setting of post-WWII Italy, and Petruchio, no wait, Lucentio and his buddies were American-Italian soldiers. The acting of Katharina and Petruchio, and everyone, was really good. Parts of it were so hilarious."

Okay... Naturally I wish I'd described it a little more. The only other thing I remember now is that, at one point, Katharina was so angry and frustrated that she took a shoe (from her own foot?) and started whacking one of the nearby bushes.

Hmm, it doesn't sound that funny when I tell it, but it was very funny. I promise.

And then comes the Long and Pitiful Hiatus, when I had to rely on tv and vhs for Shakespeare. I call it Long and I call it Pitiful, and indeed it was, but there were bright spots provided by Kenneth Branagh. My hero!