The Beard of Avon (review)

World theatre's most intriguing mystery, the question of the true authorship of William Shakespeare's plays, has filled library shelves with scholarly works attempting to prove one theory or another, but the obscure facts of theatre history are too cloudy for a definitive answer to ever emerge. Did the man from Stratford who became a London actor actually write the diverse, lyrical, and complex plays that bear his name? Or was the man from Stratford merely a front for any number of other possible authors who could not or would not put their own names on the plays? Is it possible that the man from Stratford, with only a modest rural education at best, could have possessed the necessary erudition to compose plays studded with complicated references to history, literature, and other cultures?

Since the artifacts of stage history cannot definitively answer such questions, it is left to the imaginative dramatist to examine this contentiously debated theatrical mystery. Amy Freed's The Beard of Avon, which had its premiere at the South Coast Repertory in California in 2001, offers a fractured fairy tale of authorship that seems as much inspired by a Mel Brooks parody as it is by Tom Stoppard's Academy Award-winning film, Shakespeare in Love. Where Stoppard—a remarkable purveyor of language—emphasizes romance and artistic self-discovery in his screenplay, Freed—a similarly adept wordsmith—explores the very nature of language itself and the intangible font of creative achievement. Despite occasional bursts of anachronistic broad comedy, Freed proves herself a true ally of Shakespeare in many ways. She amply demonstrates her romance with language, rich characterization, and a bold mix of humor and drama with moments of surprisingly moving pathos in this delightfully crack-brained play. Among contemporary US dramatists, Freed seems a disciple of Tony Kushner and his brand of highly imaginative theatre, offering riffs on history, politics, culture, and art springing from an impressive knowledge of world history and literature wrapped up in a blissfully inventive wallow in the beauty of language. Whether indulging in intricate speechifying or punning banter, Freed's outstanding characteristic as a dramatist is the richness of her ingenious experimentation with the complexities of wordplay.

The Beard of Avon's dizzying array of tones, shifting abruptly from broad farce to serious drama, and from bawdy comedy to melodrama—and back again—partially succeeds in creating a crazy quilt, mock-Renaissance atmosphere. Although this wildly eccentric play is, at times, a somewhat ponderous and ungainly pseudo-tribute to theatre and the art of collaboration, its highly energized, visually lavish production on the Goodman The-atre's main stage is frequently touching and often enchanting.

Freed, whose prior plays include the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award winner Freedomland, is less interested in accurately recreating Shakespeare's England and more inclined to reflecting historical facts in the fun-house mirror of her own labyrinthian imagination. Through sophisticated rhetoric and madcap humor she imagines Shakespeare's troubled relationship with his wife, Anne Hathaway, and more significantly, invents a working relationship with Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, Freed's leading candidate for partial authorship of Shakespeare's plays.

Freed's Shakespeare, played with a pleasing blend of rural awkwardness and aching creative drive by Rob Campbell, is living as an unhappy and unsuccessful Stratford farmer at odds with his wife, played with a diamond-hard wit by Hollis Resnik. The formidable Anne prefers that Will, a man distracted by "great thought-like 'things'" in his head, would focus on filling their table with food instead of dreaming theatrical dreams. She is continually disappointed because Will is completely besotted with the stage—in Freed's imagination he needs an escape from both this unhappy marriage and the dullness and hardships of rude country life. Fascinated by traveling players passing through Stratford, Will runs off with them to London to become an actor.

With Will's arrival in London, Freed breaks away from the dimly...