Hamlet - down on the farm

Hamlet - down on the farm

A quick review and some funky pics
by Norah Dooley

Well, they said it couldn't be done...but what did they know? Because, by gum - they did it. What did they do? As if doing a Shakespeare play from start to finish in two weeks isn't crazy enough? Why, they played the most serious comedy and tragical mirth of Hamlet and set it on a farm. Elsinore Farm to be exact. Noah Dwason, Gibson LaRoche and Caleb Chase were the co-directors who set the stage for the players in pig-noses and furry tails ( Ham-let, aka a friend of Winnie ThePooh?) and set in motion a slew of many new-to-acting under 12 year old recruits. And they did it in a heat wave. And with other "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" besides. And they did it all in less than usual 2 weeks, too.

 Maureen Blasco  ( a founding-mother) was the production factotum,( do-it-all) for the 10th year running ! She realized the set design and built props with the players and all were fabulous. I really loved the visuals of the "play within a play". The other founding-mother, Beth Gospadarek worked her conjuring magic and produced all the other parts that are required, including, T-shirts, spot light an, in her Tenth Program, a new Shakespeare quiz which stumped me! Kathy Morris, (- a founding aunt? ) along with Patti Stanko represented  the Phinehas S Newton Libarry  providing moral and physical support as always.

Alissa Allen made the charming costumes that allowed freedom of movement and were a feast for the eyes.As for this viewer, one of the best parts was Caleb Chase's inter-scene banjo playing persona - he looked on, straw hat, rocking chair and all and commented on the action too, by plucking out melancholy and witty riffs on his banjo. Thankfully, the comic setting and sleekly edited script brought some of the plot points to astonishing clarity as it was hard to hear in the 110º F town hall with all the fans blowing.  And Grace Dufour discharged her part as Hamlet with vim and verve. Marni Anair as Orphelia, an ethereal swan was moving. Polinius was energetic and the Grave Diggers ( doubling and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) revealed comedy and hidden menance with equal ease.

The production, as always took a village to raise and as soon as someone sends digitized notes this lazy typist will enter all the names here. But a huge shout out to two entities in town is easy enough to type - thanks to the Royalston Cultural Council and The Friends of Phinehas S. Newton Library.

Meanwhile, please enjoy these poor photos and one of my favorite summaries of the play:


Green Eggs and Hamlet
anon with a tip o' the hat to Dr. Seuess



I ask to be or not to be.

That is the question I ask of me.


This sullied life, it makes me shudder.

My uncle's married my dear sweet mother.


Would I, could I take me life?

Could I, should I end this strife?


Should I jump out of a plane?

Or throw myself before a train?


Should I from a cliff just leap?

Could I put myself to sleep?


Shoot myself or take some poison?

Maybe try self immolation?


To shudder off this mortal coil,

I could stab myself with a fencing foil.


Slash my wrists while in the bath?

Would it end my angst and wrath?


To sleep, to dream, now there's the rub.

I could drop a toaster in my tub.


Would all be glad if I were dead?

Could I perhaps kill them instead?



This line of thought takes consideration-

Tho' just a prince, I'm king of procrastination.

The Tempest - blasts off tomorrow night

 

A fine production with a great theme - a very apt cast and crew put on The Tempest tomorrow night!

The Plot

 Milan's deposed duke Prospero and his gorgeous daughter Miranda have been discovered alive and well - on a desert island. And now wedding bells are ringing for young Miranda and Ferdinand, the dashing heir to the throne of Naples.

Prospero, thought killed when his brother Antonio took over Milan in suspicious circumstances, had actually been living in luxury on the island for the past twelve years. Always a bit of a wizard, the sorcery student had used his magical skills on the island's inhabitants - airy spirit Ariel and moody monster Caliban - who waited on him hand and foot.

 

Despite his cosy life, he was set on paying back his double-dealing brother and crony Alonso, King of Naples, who'd conspired to dupe him of his dukedom. So when their ship came sailing by, it was revenge time!

With a wave of his wand, Prospero BEACHED the ship and:

CONVINCED Alonso that his son Ferdinand was drowned; Left the shipwrecked lords AGHAST with magical visions;

TERRIFIED the traitors Antonio and Alonso;

 Finally, he FOILED a plot between Caliban and drunken sailors Trinculo and Stephano to take over the island.

But the magician soon showed his softer side. When Miranda and Ferdinand fell hard for one another, Prospero arranged an amazing illusion show for them.

And after Ariel gave him an earful for his treatment of Alonso and Antonio, he freed and even forgave them.

As the happy group left the island, Prospero had one last command for hard-working Ariel that must have come as a great relief to everyone - "calm seas"!

O brave new world, That has such people in't!

We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

You taught me language, and my profit on't Is I know how to curse.

The Tempest

This summer  June 2012- July 2012 the Royalston Shakespeare Company will present The Tempest in two acts. Directors will be Noah Dawson and Yasmine Seghir and art director Caleb Chase with Gibson LaRoche. Details forthcoming!  Check back here.

Thank yous for 2011 Midsummer Night's Dream

Thank you:
Long before Shakespeare, theater depended upon patronage and that tradition continues: This production of Midsummer Night’s Dream is made possible through the kindness of our community, funding of the members of the Friends of the Phinehas S Newton Library, and the generosity of advertisers.

Especial thanks to:
The Town of Royalston for allowing use of this perfect stage.
 



Thanks also to the Town Administrative Assistant, Helen Divoll, who cheerfully puts up with our troupe of theatrical distractions.
 
Parents for providing snacks, running lines, schlepping actors, buying tshirts, and being flexible.
 
Royalston Cultural council for its funding and enthusiastic support.
 
Michael and Ann Copeland of the Salvation Army for costuming help.
 
Athol High School for loaning its spotlight. The RSC would never shine without your generosity.
 
Noah Siegel for his muscle, tools and know -how on the sound system.

One night only! "The play's the thing..."

What a great show. The cast and crew really pulled together and gave a thoroughly enjoyable rendition of A Misdsummer Night's Dream at the Royalston Town Hall. Due to snow days extending the school year we had only nine days from casting to opening night. Phew! That was fast and required a sincere commitment from all involved. Thanks to Asher Chase and Noah Dawson for stepping up to help make another season of Royalston Shakespeare Company possible. Big ups to Maureen Blasco, Norah Dooley Beth Gospodarek, and Carla Stanley for encouraging and supporting them in their first year as stage directors.


We are hugely indebted, to the parents and to Kathy Morris, Jen Bartkus and all the staff at the Phinehas Newton Library who each year support us in every way. And a big thanks to the Royalston Arts Council as well. Each year we have sponsors and help comes from the wider community, from cupcakes to costumes, people pitch in and make this event the best way to start a summer I can think of. Here are a just a few photos from my iPhone in a slide show, to give you a sense of the excitement and beauty of the performance on Friday, July 1st, 2011. Check in with Beth or Kathy about more slides and video of the performance.


Here is the slide show:

Dramatis Personae in order of appearance

THESEUS/ OBERON Ben West
EGEUS Noah Dawson
HIPPOLYTA/ TITANIA Tobey Rose Chase
PETER QUINCE Olivia Dufour
SNUG, the joiner Owen MacPhee
BOTTOM, the weaver Hanna Seghir
FRANCIS FLUTE, the bellows mender Hannah Bartkus
SNOUT, tinker Haleigh O’Regan
STARVELING, tailor Marnie Anair
LYSANDER Casey Galat
DEMETRIUS Yasmine Seghir
HERMIA Elizabeth West
HELENA Emily Mangum
PUCK Marissa Galat
PEASEBLOSSOM Julie Gambill
COBWEB Soleil Osgood
MOTH Grace Dufour
MUSTARDSEED Laura Bartkus and
Samantha West
 
The Stage Crew:
Matt Galat
Owen MacPhee

Lights! Sound! Costumes...& 3 days left

A few iPhone pics in a slide show...

Whooee.There is lots of work to do and plenty has been done. Lights are up, sound system up and today we worked on costumes and distributed T-shirts!  Everybody is doing a great job. Big ups to Carla Stanley for costuming the entire cast this morning in about 1.5 hours. The Royal mortals are dressed up to go clubbing at  the disco. The Fairey people are two clashing hippie tribes and the "rude mechanicals" are some country music loving "good old boys".  Most of are actors are young women under the age of 15, some by a decade...But they are all fabulous and look fabulous too. 

Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Titania awakes but Bottom "waketh not".

An interesting take on MSND

Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream 

By CLIVE BARNES

Published: January 21, 1971 

Many people have seen magic in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the magic of moonshine and fairyland, and-since no Shakespearean play has been so foully encrusted over with nineteenth-century romanticism-the magic of Mendelssohn and bosky scenery looking good enough to eat. Peter Brook has also seen magic in the Dream, but it is the magic of man. His production of the play, first seen last summer at Stratford-on-Avon and now gloriously come to the Billy Rose Theater, is also full of the magic of the theater.

It is a celebration of life and fancy, of man and his imagination, his fate, and the brevity of his brief candle in the light of the world. Shakespeare gave us "the lunatic, the lover and the poet," and Brook smilingly added the acrobat.

This is without any equivocation whatsoever the greatest production of Shakespeare I have ever seen in my life-and for my joys and my sins I have seen literally hundreds. Its greatness lies partly in its insight into man, and best of all its remarkable insight into Shakespeare. But it also lies in its originality. It is the most genuinely and deeply original production of Shakespeare in decades.
So-called original Shakespeare often is enough to make sensitive and sensible men squirm. It usually means strange texts, outlandish readings, battered phrases, rude glosses and impertinent additions. Here it means no such thing. Here it means merely that Brook has forgotten-not really forgotten, for on occasion he jokes about it-or at least ignored, that scaly accretion of time called a classic's performing tradition. Brook has behaved as if A Midsummer Night's Dream had been written just last midsummer by a young man with an archaic turn of phrase, an immortal gift for poetry, and no ability whatsoever to write stage directions.

He has taken this script and staged it with regard for nothing but its sense and meaning. He has collaborated with Shakespeare, not twisted his arm or blinded his senses, not tried to be superior, but just helped him out to get this strange play on stage.

Titania's bower and her people.

Helped by the designer Sally Jacobs, Brook has placed the play within three white and gleaming walls. Across the back are two white doors, and on top of the walls are battlements where musicians can play, actors run or wait, or even on occasion dangle scenery into the playing cockpit below. Its purpose? And for that matter, the purpose of an Oberon on a trapeze, a Puck who juggles with plates or dashes across the scene on Tarzan rope or runs on stilts? Why all this? Are they merely the tricks of Brook's fertile imagination; conjurations to while the time, and limn out a little talent? Emphatically no.
Brook has taken this play as pristine new and samite white. But he also knows that we take to the play our expectations taken from schoolhouse and playhouse. He wants, I think, to surprise us into listening to these lute-songs of the spirit with new ears and unencumbered intelligences.
His one liberty-and this has been taken in some circles as a mere literary conceit-has been to combine the roles of Theseus and Hippolyta with those of Oberon and Titania, that of Philostrate with Puck and that of Egeus with Quince. What sounds perverse in theory, in practice serves to emphasize the playwright's purpose. Shakespeare should have done such a combination himself. For a rare once, the director knows best.

For now the play takes on the shape of an allegory of love, with the actors, and their plays within plays, whether they be mechanicals or poets, all pointed toward some explanation of sudden love and eventual mortality. "What fools these mortals be," muses Puck. But here Puck too is mortal, and fairyland is only a dimension of love, for Theseus, Oberon and, yes, even, the comically tragic Pyramus, all are lovers.
Brook takes the elements of the theater and mixes them as if he were a chef trying out a recipe. Circus tricks, Indian chants, flamenco guitar, children's streamers, paper plates, mock and mocked Mendelssohn, all are thrown into some eclectic broth. Only the text is sacred, to be illuminated, or like some holy child, cosseted, and once in a while cuffed behind the ear, to show a proper religious irreverence.

This year our cast is very young and mostly girls...

The superb actors seem as dedicated to Brook as Brook is to Shakespeare. Alan Howard, humorous and compassionate as the Theseus/Oberon, Sara Kestelman, sensual and womanly as the Hippolyta/Titania, John Kane's supremely amused Puck, David Waller's humanistic and appealing Bottom, the Quince of Philip Locke, the lovers of Mary Rutherford, Frances de la Tour, Terence Taplin and Ben Kingsley are all masterly in the natural way of men and women surprised in life rather than actors caught acting.
If you have any interest in the theater, in life or in your fellow men, I think you will be transfixed by this Dream. And, if you haven't, well, even so, you might appreciate still the fun and the juggling. As Shakespeare would surely be the first to admit, jugglers have their place.