Jun. 30, 2010 - Issue #767: The Bestest of Edmonton 2010

Prevue

Summer bard

Festival features heroines, hubris

Summer creates a conundrum for the Edmontonian theatre fan: we want to keep abreast of events, yet at the same time are desperate to enjoy the few, perfect months of long, hot nights. Freewill Shakespeare Festival, thankfully, combines the best of both scenarios, allowing us to consume a bit of culture while being outdoors.

"The outdoor experience is great—Mother Nature helps create the atmosphere," says Marianne Copithorne, artistic director of the festival. "Shakespeare wrote these to be performed outdoors, and there is so much charm in that—to be out at a play while the sun is going down, there's a magic that happens."

Each year, the festival presents one tragedy and one comedy. This year, it's Macbeth starring James MacDonald and Melissa MacPherson as the king and queen of Scotland, and Much Ado About Nothing with John Ullyatt and Belinda Cornish as the sparring love/hate duo Benedick and Beatrice.
If it all seems a little daunting, don't worry about not understanding the poetic English of 400 years ago: the programs contain synopses of both plays. And Copithorne reassures us that you might remember more of your high school English class than you think:

"It might take five or 10 minutes to attune the ear to Shakespeare. Our job is to make it as clear as possible, but once you've got it, away you go!"

What is more difficult to translate sometimes is the culture and morals of the Elizabethan age.

"We're different people now, with different beliefs," says Copithorne, who is the director of Much Ado. "So it was important to set it in a time period when to have a woman's honour put into question had great consequences; she could lose her life."

But Copithorne draws on the broader themes of the power of gossip and rumour—and there's plenty we can all relate to there.

"Even 400 years later, what we do have in common is that we have this weakness in our character that allows us to believe in hearsay. That's what I love about Shakespeare; he knows that about human nature."

While Copithorne exploited the commonality between the audiences of the 16th and 21st centuries, for the tragedy, director John Kirkpatrick followed a different tack: setting the Scottish play not in the Highlands, but in the Cold War-era Balkans. Surprised?

"I was trying to find the equivalent for the witches that were in a cultural context where they are believed and have some power. So instead of ugly, old witches, we have young, attractive gypsies. The Communist paranoia—the crumbling of states and the uprising of new ones, that seemed to fit," he says. "It's still clearly set in Scotland, but it's as if Scotland was located somewhere between Hungary and Yugoslavia."

So aside from cutting the odd reference to Scotland, the relocation does make sense, and in fact takes ancient themes of overweening ambition, guilt, regret and the isolation that comes from making unhuman choices, and places them in circumstances just barely remote from recent memory, and hints at a warning to any current leaders who might be pushing his luck for an undeserved place in history. Such a leader is damned, and the play's cursed reputation is one sign that Nature herself condemns such hubris.

"The last time we staged it, it stormed every night. We might not get so lucky this time, but there's a mystery to Macbeth that people do respond to. If you want to see Shakespeare's action thriller, done by a crack team of actors, this is it. Let's get it out of the book and away from the ideas from school." V

Until Sun, July 25
Freewill Shakespeare Festival
MacBeth (even nights), Much Ado About Nothing (odd nights), (8 pm, weekend matinees 2 pm)
Heritage Amphitheatre, Hawrelak Park, $15 – $22.50, $35 for festival pass
PWYC Tue, Sat matinees  vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus