Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

No Errors in Bard's Equivocation

Monday, July 14, 2014

Behold - the head - of a traitor! - Anton Lipovetsky's severed head - Heidi Wilkinson Bard Props

I saw Bard’s Co-production (Belfry Theatre, Victoria and directed by Michael Shamata) of Bill Cain’s Equivocation last Thursday. It left me in turmoil and more so when Bard Artistic Director Christopher Gaze sent me a PDF version of Cain’s script.

Last night, Sunday at the opening performance of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline I made a point to ask Richard Wolfe, Artistic Director of Pii Theatre on his experience in reading scripts. He told me that many of them have no added information and that playwrights, particularly George Bernard Shaw published and publish scripts they know lay people will read.

This was not the case with Cain’s script. Reading his comments and instructions is a separate laugh (joy) all of its own.

Equivocation, the play, written in 2008 by Bill Cain who is a member of the Society of Jesus is dedicated:

This play is dedicated with great love to Kevin Bradt. When in despair over Equivocation, I’d call him up and say, “Nobody is ever going to want to see this play,” he always said the same thing – “I want to see it.” So I wrote it for him. It was the last play he ever saw. He loved it. So this is for Kevin.

Now Kevin M. Bradt happens to also be a Jesuit who taught at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Why Equivocation was the last play he saw is not clear, but I did find the obituary of one Kevin Michael Bradt who died in California in December 2008.

Kevin Bradt said of his friend’s TV series Nothing Sacred:

Kevin Bradt accented God's gift of freedom and its role in human drama. We do not always use that freedom well, even with the help of revelation. Our 4,000-year tradition of Jewish and Christian living with the light of revelation affirms that God loves believers even when we use our freedom to make terrible mistakes. In fact, God keeps doing something important among us and through our lives. In a sense there is nothing big or sacred about our day to day existence; yet everything about our days is significant, special, sacred. Nothing is so profane, that God is not there with us. Narrative is able to portray this complexity. Nothing Sacred sought to do so.

The above may be all too long to interest anybody wanting to read a quick one on a Bard on the Beach play. But if the above in any way has sparked an interest soldier on.

I am a baptized, confirmed, etc Roman Catholic whose mother sent him to a Catholic boarding school, St, Edward’s High School, in Austin, Texas.

My teacher of religion, Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. told us about the Jesuit motto AMDG (Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam) or all for the greater glory of God. What this meant was that any personal act is significant if we give it direction. If the direction is towards the glory of God then even brushing your teeth can be significant, but perhaps not as much as the narrative of a play. I have always been an admirer of the Jesuits and particularly now that an Argentine Jesuit is Pope. But more than ever after seeing and reading this play it is about my admiration for the mind of these intelligent men.

Equivocation, is a serious and complex play that has many funny moments. Some of them come from the fact that the cast of 6 play, at least two roles each. The changing of roles can come from a rapid costume change (there must be an army of fast-dressers in back) or simply with expression and gesture.

In a nutshell the play is about Shakespeare (in this play called Shag for Shagspeare) who is about to write a play (plausible but not in fact) commissioned by King James 1st via his leading minister Robert Cecil about the 1605 Gunpowder Plot in London. It is about how this led to frustrations and, yes, several incidents of equivocation which ultimately resulted in the retrieval from a laundry basket of a discarded play set in Scotland and having three witches. We find that Bonnie King James was partial to witches and was related to Banquo.

The Cain script is full of delightful advice to the director:

Sharpe/Conspirator (played by Anton Lipovetsky)

(swashbuckling)

May! Let us rather hold fast the mortal sword and bestride our down-fall’s birthdom.

Sharpe, zorro-s with his sword and is, in general, delighted with himself and his costume.

Scene 5 – The Gunpowder Plot –Shag’s First Draft – Night.

A full-on Shakespeare period play. Props. Costumes. All of it. Let later drafts be more naturalistic. Here we hear the pentameter and are conscious of it. Enter The Priest in a traditional black robe.

Judith (Shag’s daughter) played by Rachel Cairns

(mostly to herself)

Plays have beginnings and endings. That’s two lies right there…And people listen. When does that ever happen?...And they care what happens – even if it’s not happening to them.

(to the audience)

How could there be anything true about a play?

Judith surveys the audience. Then speaks to them. Judith doesn’t judge things. She simply notices them.

Witch/Armin (Shawn Macdonald)
(collecting pages from the ground)

Waitwaitwait - This is not way to treat a script! (pages assembled roughly)

Got it!

For the only time in the play, the witches are very Halloween withch-t! Full-tilet, larger than life witchy witchy witches!

I could go on and on..

Anousha Alamian plays Nate (a member of Shakespeare’s cooperative) and Sir Robert Cecil. Alamian’s Cecil is scary and oily. He walks with a limp and a hunched back but instantly is not Cecil but Nate (and a few characters more) with a flicker in the face and a change of posture. Alamian is mocked by Gerry Mackay (plays Richard Burbage/ Father Henry Garnet (the Jesuit) by playing Richard III with the limp in one of the many plays within the play (and within that play) of Equivocation.

Rachel Cairns is Judith with contemporary accent and gesturing (she reminded my wife and I of our 17 year-old granddaughter) and an unwavering precision performance that wonderfully clashes with the emotions of all the others who preen, shout, cry and scream. In fact Cairns to me was that blind seer Tiresias present in many ancient Greek plays. We know what’s going on because she is there to tell us.

Bob Frazer as Shagspeare is able to insert a person into the myth and the enigma that is Shakespeare. Through his Shagspeare and Cain’s words we explore ethical questions that affect us today.

Anton Lipovetsky plays Sharp (in Shakespeare’s company), and King James via an atrociously wonderful Lear. As Sharp he is the only one allowed to somehow break Judith’s impenetrable stability with a kiss. As Tom Wintour one of the jailed Gunpowder Plot conspirators he realistically loses his head but keeps it firmly on as one the most entertaining kings, not in any Shakespeare plays, King James the 1^st. There is a possibility that while Shagspeare in Equivocation, says,” I don’t do propaganda," and he does his best not to sell his soul to James via Cecil, there is that line in Macbeth (and in Equivocation):

"Some I see that two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry," said by Macbeth which is all about the joining of the scepters of Scotland and England. Shakespeare is making sure of obtaining the patronage of the literate king. He did in the King's Men.

Shawn Macdonald plays Armin (in Shakespeare’s company) and Cecil’s brother-in-law advocate Sir Edward Coke. If ever this successful actor, very good at oily parts decides to sell used cars I would advise against it. I would never buy a used car from this man!

Gerry Mackay plays Richard Burbage but is best as Father Henry Garnet the Jesuit and expert on equivocation. If Rachel Cairns’s Judith tell us how things are Mackay’s Garnet tells us how things should be.

No review of this play can be an authentic one, I believe unless it is seen more than once. A good way of almost seeing it again is to see Cymbeline in which the above six players are joined by only one more, Benjamin Elliott and his accordion. I looked forward to seeing Cymbeline wondering how Cairns would now play a strong but emotional woman that is Imogen. And somehow I knew ahead of time that the Lipovetsky character would lose his head in that play, too!

As I watched these six going from one role to another I imagined Anousha Alamain playing Richard III or Iago or just about any villain in Shakespeare. Macbeth? Yes, too! Curiously I saw two Hamlets, Rachel Cairns (and why not?) and Shawn Macdonald who would be able to show lots of inner turmoil in spades. We will have to wait a tad for Gerry Mackay to play Lear. Bob Frazer has played most of the lead rolls of Shakespeare and Shakespeare himself. The solemn temples, the great globe itself beckon for him.

A Midsummer's Night Dream

The Tempest

Are melted into thin air

A mole cinque-spotted

Link to: No Errors in Bard's Equivocation