Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare Program
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare Program content
Theatre
Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare
Forced Entertainment (United Kingdom)
Australian Premiere
Dates: Sat 8 Mar - Sun 16 Mar
Venue: Space Theatre
Duration: 45mins, no interval - 1hr 15mins, no interval
Co-produced by Berliner Festspiele – Foreign Affairs Festival, Berlin and Theaterfestival - Basel
Contents
The Company
From the Director
The Plays
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The Company
Forced Entertainment is an ensemble of six artists founded in 1984 and based in Sheffield, UK. Touring and presenting their ground-breaking provocative performances around the world, the group have sustained a unique collaborative practise for over forty years. The work explores and often explodes the conventions of genre, narrative and theatre itself drawing influence not just from drama but from dance, performance art, music culture, cabaret and stand-up. Exciting, challenging, entertaining and questioning, Forced Entertainment has influenced the ecology and experience of theatre in the UK and beyond and been key players in of the development of a truly contemporary theatre language, inspiring generations of international theatre makers.
‘…Near legendary…at the forefront of performance and innovation.’ The Stage (UK)
‘...Theatre pioneers’ BBC Arts News (UK)
‘Shockingly Brilliant.’ The Guardian (UK)
‘The best group of stage actors in Britain.’ - The Times (UK)
Credit: Hugo Glendinning
From the Director
Tim Etchells on Forced Entertainment’s Complete Works
Shakespeare ghosts the English language so ubiquitously, cropping up just about anywhere you look as either idiom, pun, quotation or paraphrase, that it’s pretty much impossible to avoid the bloke, no matter how deep in the world of devised performances, new texts and interdisciplinary projects you might generally try to hang out. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Plus as a theatre maker – in England at least – you’re almost inevitably dogged by random annual inquiry as to ‘when you’re going to try your hand’ at that particular 16th century fairground attraction.
Coming late in the game, after 30 years pretty much Shakespeare-free (ok, bar the odd textual allusion and a week-long skirmish with King Lear), the Forced Entertainment project Complete Works feels like we’ve found a good solution to this particular version of the ‘English problem’. Approaching all the Shakespeare plays in a single project, albeit focusing entirely on the narration of the plots, we’re in at the deep end, and somehow pretty much dodging the bullet at the same time.
In the 36 discrete 45-60 minute-long performances that comprise the complete version of the project, Forced Entertainment performers – Robin Arthur, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor and Richard Lowdon, joined by regular collaborator Jerry Killick – take turns enacting or summarising the stories of the plays using a large collection of everyday objects arranged on a modest tabletop.
Drawing on research I did during an RSC MyShakespeare commission a couple of years back, the schematic narrations of Complete Works are about proximity and overview. The intimacy of the auditorium, seating people close to the table that serves as its stage, finds a close mirror in the camera shot presenting the action to online audiences when we have sometimes live-streamed the work. The banal platform of the table-become-stage is at once the how-to space of so many Internet tutorials and how-to videos and at the same time, a distant cousin to the ‘wooden O’ invoked by Shakespeare in Henry V as the arena for the audience’s collective imagination. Indeed, Shakespeare is full of such references to the alchemical transposition of language to images, explicit invitations that spectators work to conjure action as described from the stage. It’s a device that, in one form or another, has been a part of Forced Entertainment’s performances since a long time, most centrally perhaps in Dirty Work (1998), a stage production in which pretty much everything that ‘happens’ does so through description and a process of linguistic unpacking. For Complete Works – our episodic Shakespearean marathon – this game of decoding language is set in motion hand in hand with a kind of lo-fi puppetry and diagrammatic deadpan, playing the tabletop as stage, making stand-ins for the characters and actors with a set of unlikely domestic objects.
Watching Richard Lowdon in rehearsal for The Tempest, with a flowerpot for Caliban and a bottle of soy sauce for Trinculo, summoned for me the idea of some last-minute-kitchen-table-bank-heist planning session gone wrong; the shipwrecked mariners here, Prospero and Miranda there, the getaway car long forgotten. Claire Marshall’s All’s Well That Ends Well meanwhile cast a bottle of Nina Ricci Perfume as the King of France and a large size Discount Pharmacy Nail Polish Remover as Bertram, Claire seated at the elaborately laid out table, resembling a storybook child acting plays with whatever’s to hand, confined to a bathroom, cupboard or attic on some toyless rainy afternoon.
In one sense, the inscrutable objects give nothing, amplifying to absurdity some of Bresson’s maxims about the ideal of blankness when it comes to acting and images in cinema. But the project does somehow manage to get blood from the stones. The unpromising machinery of the tabletop stirs something deep, through which the stories gain a kind of traction; in time you find yourself watching the box of matches for a trace of a protagonist’s guilt, staring at the large bottle of wood glue for signs of a supporting character’s dilemma, or wondering about the fate and motives of an allspice jar. On the one hand, it’s a kind of rudimentary ventriloquism, bringing life and voice to these supposedly dead things, but on another, the work taps the half-life that objects have anyway, their speechless speech, the traces of their action and purpose, their haunted existence. Even these inanimate performers – coming from the kitchen cupboard, the grocery store, the garage, the junk shop and the supermarket – bring something to their roles.
Amongst the most interesting moments in these versions of Shakespeare are those where the plays, on their own terms, stage questions about personhood and agency, fate and free will, life and death. Watching the objects arranged on the table for the end of King Lear, gathered around the body of Cordelia (as played by a small glass vial), Robin Arthur’s glass vase representing Lear looking down to see if his daughter is still breathing; or watching Terry O’Connor’s Richard II pontificate and philosophise endlessly, you’re confronted in a double sense by the lifelessness of Cordelia, by the inertness of the king. It’s the search for a speculative interiority that’s compelling and baffling at the same time – the conundrum that’s at the heart of puppetry, and perhaps, at the heart of acting itself.
Tim Etchells
A version of this article was published in Exeunt Magazine 2 July 2015.
The Plays
CORIOLANUS
Performed by Jerry Killick
Sat 8 Mar, 1pm
Anti-elitism in ancient Rome: plebeians versus patricians – and in the middle of it all, a rumbling stomach.
KING JOHN
Performed by Cathy Naden
Sat 8 Mar, 2pm
Brexit in reverse: England is at war with the rest of Europe when in the middle of the battle John gives his Kingdom to the Pope. But the Pope doesn’t want it and gives it back again.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Performed by Richard Lowdon
Sat 8 Mar, 3pm
Love at first sight or love at the sight of a bank balance? Claudio, Hero, Benedict and Beatrice try to tell the difference between illusion and reality.
LOVES LABOUR’S LOST
Performed by Robin Arthur
Sat 8 Mar, 6pm
Tough rules for three bachelors: no sleep, no alcohol, no sex. But who can stick to that?
RICHARD II
Performed by Terry O’Connor
Sat 8 Mar, 7pm
Richard II is the pilot episode for the Wars of the Roses series. A double helping of bad blood, intrigue and murder between rulers, rebels and allies. To be continued in Henry IV.
TAMING OF THE SHREW
Performed by Claire Marshall
Sat 8 Mar, 8pm
Petruchio tames his wife Katherine: Kiss me Kate!
TIMON OF ATHENS
Performed by Robin Arthur
Sun 9 Mar, 1pm
You just can’t keep throwing your money around. As soon as it runs out, Timon discovers he’s also run out of friends.
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
Performed by Claire Marshall
Sun 9 Mar, 2pm
You know what’s going to happen when they swear to be faithful: nothing can come between Valentine and Proteus... except maybe Sylvia.
ROMEO AND JULIET
Performed by Terry O’Connor
Sun 9 Mar, 3pm, Tue 11 March, 11:30am
The one with the nightingale and the lark!
MACBETH
Performed by Richard Lowdon
Sun 9 Mar, 6pm, Tue 11 Mar, 10:30am
The rise and fall of the gruesome twosome Lord and Lady Macbeth puzzles the witches and sets Birnam Wood in motion. Based on a true story!
HENRY IV PART 1
Performed by Jerry Killick
Sun 9 Mar, 7pm
The series continues: Henry IV is on the throne. As the action moves between London, York, Bristol and Eastcheap Henry fights to reform the state, Falstaff fights poverty and Crown Prince Hal fights for his right to party. Part Two follows.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Performed by Cathy Naden
Sun 9 Mar, 8pm
Romeo and Juliet, the grown-up version: they too fall in love, are thwarted and die of despair. Not because of Caesar.
JULIUS CAESAR
Performed by Robin Arthur
Tue 11 Mar, 12:45pm, Wed 12 Mar, 6pm
Total Rome: wicked, treacherous, murderous. Oh yes, and you too, Brutus.
OTHELLO
Performed by Cathy Naden
Tue 11 March 6pm, Thu 13 Mar, 10:30am
Love, prejudice, jealousy, betrayal - what's not to like?
HENRY IV PART 2
Performed by Jerry Killick
Tue 11 Mar, 7pm
On with the series: while Henry IV can see his end approaching, Falstaff and Hal are getting into more trouble. However, when rebels threaten the throne, Hal suddenly remembers his duties as a statesman. Continued in Henry V.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Performed by Claire Marshall
Tue 11 Mar, 8pm, Thu 13 March, 12:30pm
Zero interest politics: moneylender Shylock doesn’t want money but a “pound of flesh” from his debtor Antonio’s body. And he’s coming to get it.
HENRY V
Performed by Claire Marshall
Wed 12 Mar 7pm,
A lavish series ending: Hal is in power: instead of pubs he now goes looking for a fight with the church and embarks without God’s blessing on a hopeless war against France.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Performed by Jerry Killick
Wed 12 Mar 8pm, Thu 13 Mar 11:30am
What joyous loving, hunting, joking, conjuring, cuddling, scaring and taunting in the forests near Athens, complete with a play within a play and enough characters for every school theatre company.
CYMBELINE
Performed by Terry O’Connor
Thu 13 Mar, 6pm
Never heard of it?! A complex piece with those perennial favourites; faith, love and jealousy – only much crazier, which may be why hardly anyone dares direct it.
HENRY VI PART 1
Performed by Richard Lowdon
Thu 13 Mar, 7:15pm
The Wars of the Roses: Series 2, Episode 1, with special guest star Joan of Arc. She leads the French army against the English and fights – in vain – with everything she’s got. Henry is briefly King of Paris.
AS YOU LIKE IT
Performed by Robin Arthur
Thu 13 Mar 8:15pm
A romp in the Forest of Arden, where each and everyone falls in love forever and they all do whatever they want.
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
Performed by Terry O’Connor
Fri 14 Mar, 6pm
A title you can trust – this really is confusing. Two pairs of twins turn Ephesus upside down.
HENRY VI PART 2
Performed by Richard Lowdon
Fri 14 Mar, 7pm
Episode 2: Politics as power. Power as politics. Caught between them: a weakening King Henry.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Performed by Cathy Naden
Fri 14 Mar, 8pm
Duke Vincentio attempts to combat widespread moral decay measure for measure. But even show trials and the death penalty do little good.
TITUS ANDRONICUS
Performed by Robin Arthur
Sat 15 Mar, 1pm
Multiple protagonists but only one survives.
TWELFTH NIGHT
Performed by Jerry Killick
Sat 15 Mar, 2pm
But what do you want? Cesario loves Orsino. Orsino loves Olivia. Olivia loves Cesario. But Cesario isn’t really Cesario: she’s Viola.
THE WINTER’S TALE
Performed by Cathy Naden
Sat 15 Mar, 3:15pm
A jealous husband tyrannizes his wife, his child and his best friend. To get to a happy ending takes 16 years and the discovery of a coastline in “Bohemia”.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Performed by Claire Marshall
Sat 15 March 6pm
Helena is in love with Bertram. Then things get confusing: he runs away, she runs after him and he keeps running – he has a one night stand with Helena, though he doesn’t know she’s Helena until Helena confronts him with this knowledge. Then there’s a happy ending
HENRY VI PART 3
Performed by Richard Lowdon
Sat 15 Mar, 7pm
Episode 3: Politics as naked terror. More revenge, brutality and destruction than in any other Shakespeare.
HAMLET
Performed by Terry O’Connor
Sat 15 Mar, 8pm
To be or not to be!? The rest is silence.
PERICLES
Performed by Cathy Naden
Sun 16 Mar, 1pm
This is your chance! Rarely performed, an extraordinary dreamlike tale from ancient Greece
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
Performed by Terry O’Connor
Sun 16 Mar, 2pm
Spin-off from Henry IV starring Falstaff trying his luck as a gigolo in Windsor. Worth it for the title alone.
KING LEAR
Performed by Robin Arthur
Sun 16 Mar, 3pm
The first edition of this inheritance thriller in 1608 is called: “The True Chronicle History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters” – with, frequently forgotten, “the Unfortunate Life of Edgar, son and heir to the Earl of Gloster…”
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
Performed by Jerry Killick
Sun 16 Mar, 6pm
The place: ancient Troy. The plot: a pledge of undying love. The time: a long way short of immortality.
RICHARD III
Performed by Claire Marshall
Sun 16 Mar, 7pm
The ultimate epilogue to the Wars of the Roses series: Richard revels in his role as a murderous villain until at the height of spinning his way to power ghosts from his past finally catch up with him.
THE TEMPEST
Performed by Richard Lowdon
Sun 16 Mar, 8pm
“O brave new world / That has such people in’t!“
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