Shakespeare: the Director's Cut (review)

Shakespeare: the Director's Cut is less a how-to book than an account of how Michael Bogdanov has done Shakespeare. An acclaimed director, Bogdanov counts his early productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the English Shakespeare Company (which he co-founded), and his later work for the British Broadcasting Corporation among his voluminous achievements over thirty-three years of practice. Given his preoccupation with how Shakespeare has been done, Bogdanov, a competent writer, might have written a handbook for his life's occupation. We know that directors cut Shakespeare; Bogdanov seems to know what must remain. Wielding a pen analogous to the "subtle social and psychological knife" with which Shakespeare cut up "the body of conservative society," Bogdanov prods the bard's corpus in this volume, a manifesto of the politics innate in textual play and at play in his productions (33).

The titular verb of Bogdanov's acerbic work—neither an academic thesis, nor a director's notebook—works both ways. Bogdanov directs his audience to reconsider the early-modern stage in light, and under the lights, of present theatrical conventions. Preferring director's notes to blocking diagrams, Bogdanov sets to remove "the barriers that exist between the language and the audience" by delineating a through-line between the lines with which he cannot part and those he is willing to cross "by associating the events with contemporary politics" (4).

Just shy of making apologies for Shakespeare's "vengeful" characters, Bogdanov proves sympathetic to the sociopolitical motivation for such behavior (140). Addressing his audience directly, Bogdanov contends that by following his method, "you uncover a devastating indictment of the appalling class-behavioral politics of that bunch of bastards on the Rialto" (140). Professor Peter Stead of the University of Glamorgan takes up such epigrammatic wit in his preface, insisting that "what Bogdanov is doing here is helping us identify the bastards in eight of the best loved plays" (1). Relating "a seminal experience" from early in his career, Bogdanov suggests that Shakespeare's "bastards" do not only appear onstage (3). A director whose "political view of theatre and education . . . was at odds with the dominant ideology" of institutionalized theatre practice, he cut the last scene of Romeo and Juliet in a 1974 production, choosing instead to stage a press conference where the surviving Montagues and Capulets unveil monuments to their lost (7). To Bogdanov, the incensed bastards of his audience learned a lesson about "real theatre" (4).

Bogdanov shares anecdotes of his heavy-handed didacticism in the easy-speaking style of one regaling after rehearsal over drinks. He justifies such diatribes by incorporating lengthy quotations from critics who have made Shakespeare political. In dialogue with Bertolt Brecht (the very practitioner and theorist with which his text will be shelved alphabetically), Bogdanov places his poetics, politics, and text in context. In his essay "Hamlet: a northern European power struggle," Bogdanov refers to Brecht's desire to make "a new play" by omitting certain "facts to reshape the story to the particular interpretation" (13). Bogdanov prepares scripts for performance by reading what he believes to be "the real story" in moments he refers to as Stephen Greenblatt's "Invisible Bullets" (5). For Bogdanov, the director plays the role of detective smelling a smoking gun. So must we who read along, though we may feel we have brought a knife to the fight.

In writing, Bogdanov successfully approximates the very tone of voice a director takes with his actors. His approach becomes risky at moments in which he provides notes when he might have taken time to elaborate. For instance, regarding Cordelia's refusal to proactively intervene on her father's shortsighted behalf, Bogdanov mentions: "This is wholly compatible with Shakespeare's bleak view of the world and Realpolitik" (125). It is desirable to be a "Realpolitiker," yet Bogdanov refuses to define his understanding of practical politics.

Given his interest in stage direction, Bogdanov's text verges on becoming a performative polemic. Appropriately, in "King...