| Along with Hamlet and Macbeth, every Canadian high school student has read William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (or at least, depending on the indulgence of the teacher, watched Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation). Yes, a nation of high school graduates will remember, if nothing else, that the light that through yonder window breaks is, apparently, Juliet.
But Valentine? Proteus? The same students able to recite Romeo’s immortal address would likely be left scrambling to place the two gentlemen of Verona in what might be Shakespeare’s first play. So much for high school.
For its 2006 season, Mount Royal College’s Shakespeare in the Park will be coupling two Shakespearean plays at opposite ends of popular consciousness: Romeo and Juliet and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The first, it might seem, is a story so immortal that it scarcely bears telling – boy meets girl, both find forbidden love, a pox on both your houses, death, death, death. And yet, SITP’s artistic director, Martin Fishman, is quick to point out that, despite the play’s seeming familiarity, its continued production speaks volumes to its enduring interest and even people’s unwillingness to accept its inevitably tragic conclusion.
"I think people think they know the play better than they do," he says. "It’s amazing how many people don’t know the story, and they go see it and they’re honestly amazed. Despite the ending, they keep hoping it will end differently. You hope a miracle will happen even though you know how the play will end."
Certainly, as Fishman notes, the play’s youth focus has continued to resonate with melodramatic teens for the better part of 500 years, and the play’s youthful protagonists have afforded SITP the opportunity to place emerging actors in leading roles, rather than placing the company’s professional actors alongside. And, with this year’s motif placing Capulets and Montagues against each other à la east and west coast rappers, the appeal to youth is clear.
But, while Romeo and Juliet has been one of the most enduring works in Western literature, The Two Gentlemen of Verona has traditionally been relegated to the dusty shelves of the Shakespeare canon, even when grounded in the ’50s "going to school" motif Fishman brings to this year’s staging. Following the friendship between Proteus and Valentine from their native Verona to their later conflict in Milan, the play contains, among other contentious elements, a scene in which Proteus very nearly rapes the play’s divisive love interest and, after being dissuaded by Valentine and apologizing, finds his friend "giving" Silvia back to him. But, while Fishman concedes that The Two Gentlemen of Verona is one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, an allusion to works that address ethical and moral dilemmas, he defends this same edge as an integral challenge for modern audiences.
"It’s based on a classical Greek view of male friendship – two men together made one person, and that of course is totally foreign to a 21st century audience," he says. "And yet I think when one tracks the journey of these two characters, the giving up of Sylvia is in actuality a challenge to his friend to see whether he will go through with it, whether his apology is real enough. It’s taking two people who are very good friends and challenging (their friendship) to the ultimate limit."
Alongside the starkly different subjects of its plays, SITP’s 2006 program will be experimenting with performing in two very different venues – SITP’s traditional venue in Prince’s Island Park and Mount Royal’s TransCanada Amphitheatre – after last year’s forced evacuation of the park saw ticket sales actually increase. It’s a trend Fishman chalks up to increasing traffic from suburban Calgary and the college’s free parking, though he is careful to note that the company has no intention of leaving its traditional space on Prince’s Island. Like Romeo and Juliet and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, it seems there’s nothing wrong with mixing tradition and the unfamiliar.
From the textbook-familiar story of Romeo and Juliet to the culturally foreign idea of friendship that drives The Two Gentlemen of Verona, SITP’s program definitely includes a range of theatre that can only be described as polar.
Romeo and Juliet runs from July 4 to 29 at Mount Royal College; The Two Gentlemen of Verona runs from August 1 to 26 at Prince’s Island Park. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.