Shakespeare in Love
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
September 16, 2017 to October 8, 2017
Tickets
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Rest easy, the Citadel Theatre is in good hands.
Daryl Cloran has had a year now as the new artistic director of the Citadel Theatre, but the 2016/17 season was still picked and planned by his predecessor Bob Baker, who retired in the spring of 2016 after a long and rich tenure at the helm of the largest theatre in Canada west of Toronto.
This season’s opener Shakespeare in Love is the first show of the first season that Cloran has fully overseen. Plus he decided to direct the show as well – which must have involved many 18-hour days leading up to opening night on Thursday, September 22, 2017.
Big challenge! Shakespeare in Love is a sprawling, BIG play in all aspects, over two hours long, 20 actors, jam-packed with action and meaning. You may remember it began life as a movie, a major hit that earned seven Academy Awards, including making the 26-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow a star and earning her the 1999 Oscar for Best Actress.
The show, at the Citadel until October 8 before moving on to the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, is quite magnificent and truly is a must-see for any Edmontonian who enjoys live theatre. A magnificent show does not come without a magnificent director.
The play itself is great fun. Like the Broadway musical hit Wicked’s relationship to the Wizard of Oz, it’s an imagined world built around Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet – a “real” imagined world where Shakespeare is writing and creating Romeo & Juliet on stage as real-life events propel its plot on.
In a nutshell, at the risk of giving away plot, Will Shakespeare (Andrew Chown) is a bon vivant about London in 1593, an up-and-coming playwright suffering from writer’s block which is unfortunate as two theatre producers are hounding him for finished scripts with imminent production dates.
In the midst of Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate King’s Daughter, chased about by creditors and producers alike, Will discovers the actor cast as Romeo, Thomas Kent, is actually a disguised fancy lady of high standing, Viola de Lesseps. Viola and Will fall for each other as deeply as Romeo and Juliet do in his play. Will is inspired to transform Romeo and Ethel into his lovebird classic, Romeo and Juliet. Despite not being a comedy or featuring a dog as specified by the producer and financier, Shakespeare has a hit on his hands.
This production, though crammed with scenes, has already found its rhythms and makes the most of everything the amazing script (originally co-written by the great Tom Stoppard for the movie) has on offer. Shakespeare in Love has you shaking with laughter, enjoying so many sly references to the politics of modern day movie/film making, worrying for Will and Viola (played exquisitely by Bahareh Yaraghi), and offering intellectual enjoyment as it cleverly references other Shakespeare plays. Elizabethan I is played as a pioneering feminist with great dry wit by Sarah Constible.
Many familiar Edmonton actors chew on the scenery – John Ullyatt as the queen’s uptight chancellor, Andrew MacDonald-Smith especially effective as the boatman, Farren Timoteo taking his physical high jinks from last season’s Peter and the Starcatcher to the next level as an actor/director of Will’s evolving play-in-progress. Ashley Wright has great fun as Fennyman the capricious financier.
There’s nothing about this show that is timid or hesitant. It shows a director who, while maintaining overall structure and discipline, gives plenty of rope to all his actors. There’s much trust on both sides.
Over the years, most regular Citadel Theatre goers were great fans of long-time (17 years) artistic director Bob Baker, who grew up in Edmonton and proved his mettle here and in Toronto before returning to take the reins at the Citadel.
As is to be expected, there was worry. How would anybody fill Baker’s boots? What if the board made a massive mistake, plunging the theatre into chaos? Hey, it has happened before over the Citadel’s 50 years!
Cloran has seamlessly led the transition. The gee-whiz kid who looks much younger than his years is worthy of the mantle left by Baker. Can’t wait for the rest of the 2017/18 season to unfold!