This was Shakespeare as I’d never seen it before. The Thespis Theatre Troupe, touring from Israel, brought their own stamp to the familiar poems; and had created a theatre production that was sexy, lyrical and memorable. This evening’s performance was at the Garrick Theatre in Whitefield, and part of the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival.
The director Meir Ben Simon came onto the stage first to introduce the performance, and explain that it was going to be in Hebrew, with English subtitles. As in, the original, Elizabethan English subtitles. I know and love the Sonnets, but even I balked at the thought of having to read them as subtitles, especially knowing how much wit and wordplay Shakespeare uses in them.
I needn’t have worried. First, because like in opera, the performers did repeat the lines over and over again, there was no desperation to get the screen read quickly; and secondly, because the key images of the poems came across beautifully in the scenography of the performance.
The stage was black, and the company of five wore sharp and modern white clothing with black lines making geometric shapes across it, designed by Rona Mishol. There were two men: Yoav Amir and Gal Shamai, and three women: Reut Berda-Levy, Odelya Dadoun and Debbie Levin. Four of them lined up in a row, and the fifth, a young man representing the Fair Youth, began painting on a mirror standing on an artist’s easel.
The sonnets were performed out of order, to hone in on particular themes found within the text. It began with the Fair Youth being smothered with loving attention: domestic love from an indulgent motherly woman and what seemed to be a bossy little sister, and erotic love from a man and a woman. The two erotic lovers got increasingly competitive with each other, with the Fair Youth not taking either of them particularly seriously at first, until finally he gave in and they had a tastefully stylised threesome in a corner. It is speculated that Shakespeare was bisexual, and the production went with that completely, with a lot of group movement and choreography created by Omer Shemer.
The female erotic lover then took off her white gown to reveal a close-fitting black gown underneath. Now she was the Dark Lady, and the verbal imagery was suggesting that her soul and personality were as dark as her beauty. The actress playing this part did have a voluptuous sexual presence that could have filled a stadium, and it didn’t take much for her to render her admirers powerless.
The passing of time was made a lot of. There was a recurring motif of mirrors, initially to reflect back the youth and attractiveness of the performers, and then, to show that as time passes it will be lost. The male erotic lover came back on the scene to comfort the Fair Youth about this, in a quiet interaction that was played very sensitively and subtly. Later in the piece, the maternal woman reverted back to being a little girl, while the male lover became a quivering, extremely aged man; and the contrast of the two extremes was utilised. Ultimately, the bossy little sister was addressing the mourners at her own funeral.
There was a gorgeous soundscape of strings and synthesiser sounds interwoven with this, composed by Nadav Vikinski, and at one point it began going into a pulsating beat and the company were singing the sonnets, in a heavy passionate style with an earthy undertone. But there were also the sounds of clocks, and the cast going into chants of “Dak…. Dak… Dak… “ Which I now know is Hebrew for “Tick…. Tick…. Tick…..”
Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 10/7/19
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