by John Gardner
...Not only is Douglas Silver’s production of Othello a piece of irreverent iconoclasm, it is probably the noisiest that audiences will ever have to suffer: blurring the poetry and action with a collection of strange, out-of-place sounds including shrieks, moans, clanking, music from Spanish bullfights and other horrors which have little or nothing to do with the Bard’s great tragedy.
It could be called an exercise of mind over matter: Mr. Silver does not seem to mind and, to him, the audience does not matter.
This terrible murder of Shakespeare is heightened by the fact that it also either drowns or stifles the, so called, actors. Joe Thomas (Othello) is a nightclub singer and performs like one...the only characteristic he shares with Othello is that they are both black...Jennifer Frost’s Desdemona reminds me of the kind of acting we get on bad television, but this must be expected as she is essentially a lady of the cinema...Edward Crispin plays Iago as a third rate matador, more concerned with his cape than his capability of speaking well...
Douglas flung down the newspaper and made for the telephone; but there was no reply from the Shireston Gazette. By the time he put down the receiver, he realized that Jennifer had read the piece.
‘Doug,’ she called quietly, ‘it’s only a little puffed up local bigot trying to be clever. Much safer to ignore him.’
‘Ignore him, hell. I’m going to knock his teeth out.’
He had calmed only slightly by the time he reached Adrian’s office. The paper was on the P.R. man’s desk and the director pointed at it, stabbing with his finger. ‘Have you seen that?’
‘Cool it, Doug. I’ve seen, read, marked and inwardly digested, and...’
‘I’ve tried to get hold of the creep...’
‘You’ve what?’
‘Tried to get hold of him.’
‘I trust he wasn’t available.’
‘Couldn’t get through. No reply.’
‘Douglas, calm down,’ Adrian had to shout. ‘You sounding off at Moir isn’t going to do any good.’
‘But that isn’t a review, it’s a string of calculated insults. Personal insults.’
‘Quite. Calculated to make you blow your top and say, or do, something provocative.’
‘They’re not even good insults.’
‘No, but they’ve done their job. You are outraged.’
Silence, edged with Douglas’s fragmented fury. At last the director dropped into a chair. ‘Adrian, we can’t leave this unanswered.’
‘Nor will we, Doug. It’s a weighted, inaccurate piece of journalistic folly, but we mustn’t show that we’re in any way rattled. We take no notice of it, and if he does the same thing with The Merchant we take direct action.’
‘What kind of action?’
‘We withdraw reviewing facilities.’
‘That won’t stop him.’
‘Wait and see. We’ll scatter him to the four winds, chum. So take no notice. Leave it with me.’
‘What about the company? Joe, Edward...?’
‘Leave them to me as well. You’ve got a dress rehearsal and you’re already late for your staff meeting.’
It was a nervous dress rehearsal, with people playing considerably under par, a natural enough reaction considering that they had a first public performance within a very few hours. However, there were no major hitches; Douglas sitting hunched in the stalls, still smarting under the Gazette review, making copious, niggling notes, most of which he, intuitively, did not give to the company.
Douglas found that, in spite of both Jennifer and Edward Crispin lightheartedly joking about the Gazette review, his fury with Moir had thrown part of his mind into turmoil. During the afternoon, when he had to attend to a myriad administration matters, the fact that the local newspaper man had gone to such pains to knock him, and succeeded, was always near to the surface of his mind.
As with the first night of Othello, the theatre was crowded for the initial performance of The Merchant, the air electric with promise. Douglas did his tour of the dressing-rooms before joining Jennifer to go into the foyer. The last person he visited was Carol Evans. Late in the afternoon, Ronnie had come over to the office and told him the result of the inquiries he had been making within the company. Felicity Durrant had told him, in confidence, what she knew of the truth and the facts now related to Douglas disturbed the director almost as much as Moir’s review. His first reaction was to get hold of Joe Thomas and give him a serious warning, but, after quick and careful thought, he shelved the whole thing, especially not mentioning it to Carol when he saw her in the dressing-room. Her stage make-up covered the bruising and the doctor’s report confirmed that no bones were broken, but she had to admit that she found fast movement a painful business: this, in turn, added to the director’s concern; his Nerissa had a lot of fast, almost balletic movement in the production.
He sat, close to Jennifer, in the stalls, the usual first night crackle going on around him (Joe Thomas with Tommy Carr and Smiley making an impressive entrance; a very famous American film actor waving delightedly across the auditorium to Jennifer; a top TV comedy double act pushing through to their seats making comments which sparked the whole row of people into frantic laughter), a trail of anxiety, like a line of disintegrated stars running through his head. A week ago he had not been in the least worried about The Merchant, the company had risen to all his ideas with a precise and professional zest; but now, sitting there within an ace of the production be-ginning, Douglas had horrendous second thoughts, as though he was suddenly seeing that nothing in his production had sound roots.
In the event he was quite wrong. The scent of success seeped from the stage almost as soon as the houselights went down and Tony’s wide chequered piazza was revealed with the melancholic Antonio and his friends setting the scene of dominant business, trade and cut-throat merchant gambling, etching out Douglas’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s basic theme of human corruption. Quickly the various threads of plot began to weave into the harsh fabric of the play: Bassanio besotted with love for Portia; Antonio and the pernicious bond made with Shylock in order to lend Bassanio money and so push forward his suit with Portia; the Lorenzo-Jessica and Gratiano-Nerissa sub-plots; they all caught meaning and an almost Chekhovian truth in Douglas’s hands.
From his first entrance (Three thousand ducats — well) Maurice Kapstein made a powerful, and totally believable, Shylock completely locked within the confines of his race, religion and profession, the hatred of Christians streaming almost visibly from him. In fact, Douglas had tried, throughout the production, to make all the cast work on a basis of realism and belief in the characters which they portrayed.
‘They’re such a load of self-indulgent people and they become alive only when you do what Shakespeare is telling you to do in the text.’
Vocally, everybody rose to the night, making a clear and comprehensible sound picture, while visually the set pieces, which Tony and Douglas had devised, worked in the best interests of Theatre: the most notable instances came early in the play, the first scene at Belmont being set in an open garden at night with Portia and Nerissa dining together in extreme luxury; later came the first casket sequence. Douglas had found the whole business of the caskets one of the major stumbling blocks in the production; the idea of suitors having to choose the right casket from three — gold, silver and lead — in order to marry Portia, and the audience already knowing that Bassanio had to be the one to choose correctly, seemed to negate the earlier scenes where the Princes of Morocco and Aragon went through their wordy rituals. You either had to skip through the scenes or embroider them; Douglas had set out to make them interesting outside their intention within the play.
The first scene in which the Prince of Morocco, played by Lonnie Barnes, greets Portia had been reset to include the later sequence in which he makes his wrong choice, and Douglas had hit on what seemed to be a splendid device. The scene was played in an enclosed courtyard, Morocco making his entrance dressed rightly in scarlet flecked with gold th
read, jewels flashing, deep greens and purple, his fingers ringed with gold, encrusted with sapphires and rubies, he was accompanied by an equally accoutred entourage and Douglas had purposely built the scene into a beautiful, if old-fashioned, theatrical picture.
Morocco made his first speech and Liz Column, as Portia, replied, ending with the words--
‘I’ ourself , renowned Prince, then stood as fair
As any corner I have look’d on yet
For my affection.’
Lonnie Barnes, using his deep bass voice to great effect, replied, slowly taking the centre of the stage--
‘Even for that I thank you:
Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets,
To try my fortune. By this scimitar,
That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince...’
Here he drew the great curved scimitar, holding it in an aggressive pose for the rest of the short speech. The scimitar was, in fact, a stage illusionist’s sword, the blade hollowed out to take a series of neatly folded large silk squares each of which could be released and delivered to the point of the scimitar in turn by a spring-loaded mechanism operated through the hand grip.
At the end of the speech, Lonnie cleaved the air with the blade, reached out dramatically and appeared to catch a dark red silk at its point, out of nowhere. Once more, a cut through the air, a lunge forward followed by a sideways movement and a second silk, dark blue, rippling at the scimitar’s point; another, orange; and another, green, until the stage around Lonnie was piled, colourful, with silk; Portia, Nerissa and the servants registering happy wonder.
The moves which followed had required a long, painstaking amount of research and work. One of Morocco’s assistants brought forward a burnished copper jar which the prince showed to be empty, while another assistant stood to one side with a large glass, globe-shaped, bowl. With a flourish, the prince began to pour water from the empty copper jar into the bowl, again showing the jar empty, and again pouring water, until the bowl was full. He then plunged his hand into the water, swirling it around to demonstrate its reality. Once more the hand into the water and this time it clouded and became ink black. An assistant hurried to him with a towel on which he dried his hands, while the other assistant brought a tray upon which stood three smaller copper basins.
Lonnie picked up the first basin, allowing its contents, green coloured dry sand, to run into his hand, then back into the basin. This he did several times before holding the basin high over the bowl of black water, letting the green sand stream out in a falling ribbon into the water, which he stirred, again drying his hands and going through a similar procedure with the second basin, which held red dry sand, and the third, yellow dry sand.
He turned to Portia with a bow, and then, showing his hand empty, reached once more into the bowl, bringing the hand out clenched and dripping, holding it over one of the basins on the tray, slowly letting a thin stream of dry green sand trickle down into the basin (delighted gasps from Portia and her retinue). Lonnie repeated the colourful effect with the red and yellow sand, then plunged his hand into the bowl again, swirling the water for the final time, and, as he did so, the blackness disappeared, leaving the water clear, showing no trace of sand, or anything else, within the bowl.
Portia and her attendants politely applauded (accompanied this time by the audience who rose to the theatrical wonder), while the prince’s assistants ranged themselves on either side of the stage, each holding an elaborate candelabrum.
Another flourish and Lonnie appeared to pluck a ball of flickering fire from the air, crossing the stage to light the four candles on the first candelabrum on the prompt side. Another ball of fire, held, it seemed, between finger and thumb, to light the candles on the opposite side, and so on until all the candles were lighted and the prince turned to Portia with an extravagant gesture, the Lady applauding him before starting her speech—
‘You must take your chance;
And either not attempt to choose at all
Or swear before you choose, — if you choose wrong,
Never to speak to lady afterward
In way of marriage: therefore be advised.’
Douglas breathed relief, the magic performed by Morocco took no more than four minutes of the production, but had to be dispatched with beauty and art to gild the scene. The audience appeared to have accepted it for what it was, an essential aspect of Theatre.
Douglas was not so certain about the sequence, later, when the Prince of Aragon came to make his choice. Ronnie Gregor had been a trifle dubious about the magic for Morocco and even more discouraging when it came to Douglas’s ideas concerning Aragon’s casket choice. Again the scene was played out in the same courtyard, this time lit by the leaping flames of torches bracketed on to the walls, and Douglas had directed the embellishment so that it came immediately upon the prince’s entrance. Like Morocco, Aragon entered with a large train of followers, notably including a guitarist and two gipsy girls, Aragon himself swathed in a long cloak reaching to the ground. Portia, with her attendants, took up positions by the caskets, ranged on a table down-stage; but before the action could begin, Aragon (played by Laurence Pern, swarthy in an olive-skinned make-up) bowed to the ladies, swept off his cloak to reveal flamenco costume; the compelling guitar rhythm started, and, joined by the two girls, Pern performed five minutes of twirling, hot, highly exciting and professional flamenco dance.
‘It’s too much, Doug,’ Ronnie had said.
‘I’m still going to use it,’ Douglas was arrogantly stubborn. ‘Those two scenes have to be lifted, otherwise they just go for nothing. I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’
Now, as Laurence spun and clattered through the dance, the director knew he had been right and that the extra hours spent by Pern with the Spanish dance director they had engaged for four weeks to do the choreography, had all been worthwhile. Doubtless it would be knocked hard by the critics, but it provided excellent theatrical spectacle as well as up-pointing the extremes of decadence which Douglas wanted the whole production to convey.
Between the two casket scenes there was a mass of action: the comedy with Launcelot Gobbo and his old father; the Jessica-Lorenzo elopement; the company carried the play forward in an upsweep of splendidly accurate work: Kapstein not overplaying the stage Jew, keeping him wholly credible (the later scene with the Jew’s friend, Tubal, brought both the dimensions of grief and dignity to the character as well as the mercenary undertow-
‘One of them show’d me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.’
‘Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.’)
Plot crossed with sub-plot: Antonio’s fortunes changed, he was forced either to pay the three thousand ducats or forfeit his bond, the pound of flesh. So to the rigged trial with the disguised Portia and the ‘mercy’ speech (Liz Column using her voice to woo the court with long sweeps of sound); thence to Belmont and the final moments of moonlight: a captivated, amused, entertained and enraptured audience.
Jennifer squeezed Douglas’s hand as the welcome applause broke, but, in spite of the smoothness of the performance, production and the audience’s undoubted pleasure, the director still felt the edge of his earlier depression: his mind holding pictures of a grinning oily Hedley Moir and the bruised face of Carol Evans.
On the following morning the reviews were oddly mixed. They all praised Maurice Kapstein’s Shylock, Liz’s Portia, and singled out Mark Lynton’s Launcelot Gobbo. The Daily Mail and the Express, surprisingly, agreed and were in favour, but The Times and the Guardian chose to be cuttingly snide about some of the production detail, The Times writing about...the overweight directorial scoring of the casket scenes, combined with almost camp situations, such as the beautiful poetic love scene between Lorenzo and Jessica at the end of the piece being played all-out for laughs, with the lovers plunging about in a hammock, making one think th
at Mr. Silver was directing ‘Carry On Merchant’ instead of Shakespeare’s play.
It worried Douglas, who genuinely wondered if he had overdirected; yet the proof was in the audience’s reaction and enjoyment (deep in his mind, Douglas knew he should not take much notice of the critics). He went into The Merchant matinee on Saturday afternoon, and again in the evening, de-lighted to see that the audience were reacting exactly as he had hoped, Shakespeare’s music being clear and unblurred, coming out strongly and with meaning from behind the direction.
The Sunday newspapers, guardians of public taste and critical seal, devoted a great deal of space to the Shireston Festival, particularly the heavy papers, though the big selling, more popular press, like the People, Mirror, News of the World, all gave at least some mention (the Mirror even used a photograph from Othello). The Sunday Times, Telegraph and Observer, not only reviewed both opening productions, but also carried articles on Shireston, the Observer reprinting the directional map which Tony Holt had designed for the programmes. They all drew attention to the exhibition, lavishing praise on it and calling the festival a new ‘must’ for tourists, from home or abroad, and a threat to the kingly positions of the Royal Shakespeare, The National Theatre and Chichester. The Observer even referred to it as...the future Glyndebourne of English Classic Theatre.
On the whole, the major reviewers seemed to go out of their way to pick up the good points: all giving outstanding approbation to the performances of Joe Thomas, Maurice Kapstein, Jennifer Frost, Edward Crispin and Liz Column. The Observer commented...whatever Mr. Douglas Silver does, or does not do, directorially within the productions, he certainly proves that William Shakespeare is able to reach forward through the centuries and tap us hard on our shoulders as easily as he did to his own contemporaries...