Eyeballs and Icicles, a Swimming Pool and a Dummy: Shakespeare and The Revenger’s Tragedy on Stage in 2008

Playgoing in 2008 yielded some distinctive choices and memorable images. I will concentrate on ten productions that include an award-winning Othello, two versions of King Lear, five comedies, the Doctor Who Hamlet, and a well-staged Revenger’s Tragedy.

The RSC Merchant of Venice received some savage reviews but provided moments worth putting on the record. Shylock, before departing his house in 2.5, set up the later reference to his turquoise ring (“I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor” - 3.1.121–22)¹ by taking it off his finger and making a long diagonal stage cross to deliver it to Jessica. Perhaps owing to director Tim Carroll’s extensive experience at the Globe, this show included more than the usual amount of direct interplay between actors and playgoers. I have seen other productions where Nerissa and Portia in 1.2 singled out members of the audience as the suitors being mocked or Gratiano ventured into the stalls (here he snuggled up with a young lady in the second row), but in the final scene such interactive stage business went a step farther. When Portia delivered to Antonio the news about the safe arrival of three of his argosies, she plucked a paper from a gentleman seated in the first row and added: “You shall not know by what strange accident / I chanced on this letter” (5.1.278–79). A moment later Nerissa tried the same trick when offering the “special deed of gift” (292) to Lorenzo and Jessica but elicited only puzzlement from the seated playgoer (who helpfully offered her program) - and the actress then found the sought-for item in her pocket.

The most distinctive choice was linked to the three casket scenes, with the desired effect not fully clear (several of my astute play-going friends came away mystified). From where I was seated, I could see no visible distinction in the color of the caskets, nor were they opened so that the choosers could extract the skull, fool’s head, and portrait. Rather, the three scenes were staged with Portia, dressed in white, placed in an upstage recess (with an echo chamber effect) surrounded by stalagmites and stalactites, while the choosers pored over large objects from which they had to clear away mist to read the inscriptions. The point (which, I confess, I did not catch during the Morocco segment) was that the caskets were frozen, as, in a sense was Portia, an Ice Maiden or Ice Princess who could only be freed by a Prince Charming with the leaden answer. When Bassanio did choose correctly, all three caskets cracked into small pieces - though when I saw the show only two of them did so (and I was told that a few times none of them fulfilled the effect).

The reviews had prepared me for director Conall Morrison’s RSC Taming of the Shrew, for, as predicted, it was very funny, especially in the first half, and was geared to a concept wherein Stephen Boxer’s drunken Sly tried unsuccessfully to join a stag party outside a bar, was rejected, even head-butted by a woman (Michelle Gomez) who was to reappear as Katherine, and fell asleep to be discovered by a Lady rather than a Lord and subjected to the trick acted out in the second “Induction” scene. At the end of 1.1 (our first view of Bianca, Kate, Lucentio, et al.) Sly was awakened, led to center stage, and handed a playscript whereupon he began, hesitatingly, to deliver Petruchio’s lines, so that the remainder of the play acted out Sly’s drunken male fantasy of success and control. At the end of the final scene, the players stripped Petruchio of his costume and departed on their truck (bearing the joke license plate XME K8), leaving Petruchio-Sly alone, bewildered, clad only his boxer shorts - the final image.

Although I knew this story line was coming (and had previously seen comparable Sly-Petruchio configurations), I was not prepared for the full...