Tag Archives: Steven Hopley

La Ronde

6 Jul

Written in the late nineteenth century, the question any current production of this play asks is its relevance.

This production contemporises costume and place names.  It’s happening now.

Foucault threw out an extraordinary challenge when he published The History of Sexuality.  Excluding the deep time of evolution, what history can sex possibly have? Isn’t sexuality just biological, not cultural? Isn’t it a timeless universal?

This production of Arthur Schnitzler’s play is fascinating because it makes an audience question whether a clear-eyed look at a supposed universal can, in fact, be historically specific. Forward looking in its time, is the play backward looking now? (It’s worth noting that the play is decidedly heterosexual. And, one would hope, the dynamic of class has changed.)

laronde-05

But the play is certainly about sex. Each of the scenes has a similar structure: pre-coital discussion, blackout for the act, then post-coital discussion. (The fact we don’t see the act itself is a powerful comment about its ineffable nature.)

The other aspect of the structure that’s intriguing is the suggestion of frequent infidelity. Perhaps not every one of the ten characters is actually being unfaithful, but each appears in two scenes, with a different lover. This highlights the strangeness of sexuality, so personal yet so ubiquitous.

The performances are good, both touching and funny (an achievement considering the tricky acoustics of the venue). Brendon Taylor as the Writer, Amanda Maple-Brown as the Actress and Emilia Stubbs Grigoriou as the Sweet Girl are particularly engaging.

Steven Hopley’s direction is simple and highly effective. He presents the play in the round and this evokes the dance of the title, and intensifies the oddity I referred to earlier: we watch beautiful young couples navigate the most private of moments and at the same time are aware of the social gaze of other audience members.

Is sex the place where the particular and the universal collide? (Or perhaps more accurately, rub up against each other?) And, if so, is this why sex is so crucial to both our sense of identity and our sense of connection?

Veronica Kaye

 

La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler

til July 12

Coronation Hall, 95 Lennox St Newtown

Performances – July 9, 11, 12 – 8pm

Book Now at www.stickytickets.com.au/enigma

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The Merchant of Venice

12 Aug

Playwrights make plays in the way that barrel wrights make barrels. They just bang ‘em out.

That’s what Shakespeare did with The Merchant of Venice, and all of them.

And that’s what makes Steven Hopley’s current production, with its brilliant cast, so fascinating and watchable.

(If this seems counter-intuitive or illogical, please stick with me anyway.)

Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare lived before the great age of Romanticism, which promoted artists to the role of high priest. He was just making entertainment, and a living.

He tried not to tread on too many toes.

For example, there is little of the spiritual life in Shakespeare. His plays are remarkably secular.

Was he just being true to his experience? Or was he simply avoiding the great religious controversies of his time? Remember, ‘heretics’ were still being persecuted.

The Merchant of Venice, despite having more talk of religion than most his plays, is intriguing because it’s still not spiritual.

(There are claims the play is anti-Semitic. To a modern sensibility, these claims are often mitigated by the fact that the Christians portrayed fare little better in our estimate than the Jews.)

Shakespeare talks of religion in The Merchant of Venice simply because he is making dramatic use of an imagined difference between Christianity and Judaism.

He exploits an old trope – that of the spirit versus the letter.

Shylock the Jew (played magnificently in this production by Mark Lee) will have his pound of flesh because the contract stipulates he can. And his downfall is ultimately because of this very insistence on the letter of the law.

And Portia (played by Lizzie Schebesta with a beautiful precision) gives her famous speech in praise of mercy. This one moment is an inspiring expression of the spirit. Give up on the law, it says, and just show love.

The spirit versus the letter? ‘We got this right, and the Jews did not.’ This is a story Christians have told themselves through the millennia. Ironically, in its harsh and simplistic judgement, it’s an attitude that negates the very insight it supposedly celebrates, and makes clear that the division between the letter and the spirit is not a division between religious traditions at all.

Rather, it’s a battle that must be fought in every life.

Which brings me back to Shakespeare.

I find him, in many ways, a dissatisfying voice, because he shows so little interest in the spiritual. (A lack of interest which goes a long way to explaining the currently fashionable claim that he’s universal, when really he just speaks to our own materialist society. Is it the greatest of cultural tragedies – that our most acclaimed writer is so deficient in one beautifully rich sphere of life?)

And what of the decision to continually produce his plays? The letter or the spirit? Going perpetually back to the ‘canon’ smacks very strongly of the former. Are we making theatre that breathes life, or is it an exercise in borrowing authority and aiming to get things right?

But this production, with its superb performances and the simple beauty of its staging, is a marvelous piece of theatre.

It’s an eminently watchable performance and an extraordinary stimulant to post show discussion.

See it, and consider both theatrical choices, and life choices.

Veronica Kaye

The Merchant of Venice

at TAP Gallery until 24 August

http://www.sydneyshakespearecompany.com/#!current-production/cb3i

 

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