LONDON—With so many nations converging on London for the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, it's only natural that influential artistic powers in Great Britain would want to celebrate and promote one of England's greatest global cultural exports: William Shakespeare.
Several Shakespeare productions have been part of the 12-week nationwide London 2012 Festival (aka the Cultural Olympiad, now through Sept. 9) and many are also jointly part of the World Shakespeare Festival 2012, which is mostly produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and runs through October.
The World Shakespeare Festival's Globe to Globe festival has already come and gone, running April 21-June 9. It featured all of Shakespeare's plays performed in different languages by international companies at the reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. (Chicago Shakespeare Theater was the only American troupe featured, with its contribution of the Q Brothers' Othello: The Remix performed in "Hip Hop English.")
During a recent trip to London, I was able to catch two prominent World Shakespeare Festival 2012 productions: Julius Caesar and Timon of Athens (which is set to be screened locally in Chicago-area movie theaters sometime in November or December as part of the NT Live series).
Although officially based in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, the RSC frequently presents limited seasons in London's West End. So as part of the World Shakespeare Festival, the RSC is currently represented at London's Noel Coward Theatre with an updated African take on Julius Caesar (now through Sept. 15) and the romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing reset in India (this Stratford-Upon-Avon production transfers for a London run from Sept. 22-Oct. 27).
Now I've always found it odd that a dry, politically probing play like Julius Caesar is almost inevitably foisted on the curriculum for high school English classes. I guess educators feel they can save time by cramming in multiple topics like Shakespearean tragedy, Roman history, rhetoric and civic duty all in one go.
But when you have high school students mangling the Tudor English and iambic pentameter of Julius Caesar as they read it aloud in class, it's often a recipe for turning kids off to Shakespeare. Too bad that most high school students' first exposure to Julius Caesar isn't nearly as entertaining as the RSC's current production, which is directed by Gregory Doran, the company's artistic director designate and husband to actor Antony Sher.
Working with an all-British cast of Black actors, Doran resets Julius Caesar in a post-colonial African country where a political assassination leads to a bloody civil war. In light of the Arab Spring and the rise and fall of many an African dictatorship, this Julius Caesar feels startlingly current and up-to-date (complete with the inevitable golden leader statue that gets pulled down in designer Michael Vale's crumbling concrete-like set).
The cast is strong all around, with Paterson Joseph offering a complex portrait of the citizen-turned-conspirator Brutus whose opinion of Caesar gets turned around by the grudge-filled Caius Cassius of Cyril Nri. Ray Fearon offers a muscular and forceful performance as Mark Anthony (believably orating to the crowd at Caesar's funeral), while Jeffrey Kissoon makes for a particularly pompous Julius Caesar.
Rather than a hindrance, the added African dialects (overseen by dialect coach Penny Dyer) bring a sparkling sing-song sheen to Shakespeare's classic text and prod the audience sit up and take notice. Doran also punctuates the production with a fine African musical band that gives extra rhythmic color and beat to the proceedings.
While an exact city or country isn't specified in the RSC's Julius Caesar, the setting of the National Theatre's Timon of Athens can be specifically pegged as modern-day London. And why not? Out National Theatre artistic director Nicholas Hytner has found an ingenious way to work in multiple events from the city's recent history in this Shakespearean text, including the global economic meltdown, the Occupy Movement tent city outside St. Paul's Cathedral and even the English riots of 2011.
Clearly the tale of the generous spendthrift Timon who places false hope in his friends to help bail him out of his many debts fits with this time of economic recession. (Which probably also explains Chicago Shakespeare Theater's staging of Timon of Athens by Barbara Gaines starring Ian McDiarmid earlier this year.)
Now it must be said that Timon of Athens is not one of Shakespeare's best plays. (In fact, many scholars agree that the play isn't completely by Shakespeare, but a collaboration with playwright Thomas Middleton.) The play's plot and tone shift schizophrenically, with Timon dying a hateful misanthrope despite the very unlikely discovery of a massive stash of gold in the second half.
But despite the dramaturgical deficiencies of the play, Hytner and his cast and crew of the National's Timon of Athens show time and time again how the work is chillingly relevant to today. As Timon's servants are repeatedly turned away by his former friends in business and government when asking for help, it's interesting to note how the audience groans when they hear excuses that we've all heard before from banks and other businesses that are unwilling to loan money.
Hytner offers up a massive production with a large cast led by out actor Simon Russell Beale (whom many critics acclaim as Britain's greatest living stage actor) powerfully taking on the title role. Other standouts include Hilton McRae as the bitter philosopher Apemantus, Deborah Findlay as Timon's gender-switched loyal steward Flavia and the greedy artistic twosome of Nick Sampson as a Poet and Penny Layden as a Painter. Although Timon of Athens may not fully satisfy overall as a drama, it contains many components that feel both timeless and hot-off-the-press in terms of the way we live today.
These two modernized and updated productions incisively showed why Shakespeare has been embraced time and time again as a playwright for all nations and all times. So in this celebratory year of the London Olympics of 2012, it's right to recall the fitting epitaph coined by Shakespeare's contemporary (and often rival) Ben Johnson about Britain's beloved Bard: "He was not of an age, but for all time."
The Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Julius Caesar continues through Sept. 15 at the Noel Coward Theatre in London before heading out on tour of select UK cities through October. For more information, visit www.rsc.org .uk or www.worldshakespearefestival.org .uk.
Timon of Athens continues in repertory at the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre of Great Britain through Nov. 1. The production is subsequently set to be screened in movie theaters throughout the world. For more information on the production, visit www.nationaltheatre.org .uk or www.worldshakespearefestival.org .uk. To find out more about the NT Live movie-theater screening, visit www.fathomevents.com .
