PREVIEW
The Comedy of Errors and Hamlet
River City Shakespeare Festival
June 19 to July 15
Hawrelak Park
Tickets: $23 to $64 plus ticketing fee and GST Visit www.freewillshakespeare.com
Summer is here and that means Shakespeare by starlight.
This summer a curious ritual makes its way across the country. From Halifax’s Shakespeare by the Sea performed along the Atlantic Ocean to Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach next to the Pacific, Canadians flock to see England's greatest playwright mounted alfresco.
William Shakespeare was closely linked to the outdoors. In his Elizabethan heyday, his plays were performed in London’s open roofed Globe Theatre making it tricky when it rained. But always an entertaining experience.
Edmonton’s Freewill Shakespeare Festival makes particularly good use of the natural setting at Hawrelak Park’s amphitheatre, a grassy rolling hill surrounded by massive trees that slope towards a stage.
It is the one fresh air festival that allows nature to control all the special effects from wind, storms and lightening to squirrels darting across the stage and sea gulls swooping in for a morsel of popcorn.
Freewill showcases its 31st edition with two works – the Bard's masterpiece Hamlet alongside one of his earliest works The Comedy of Errors.
Marianne Copithorne also marks her 10th year as artistic director directing Hamlet. She first joined the troupe in 1999 as an actor and shortly after was invited to guest direct.
One of her first directing projects was the 2006 Hamlet starring St. Albert’s John Kirkpatrick in the lead role. At the time, the multi-talented Kirkpatrick was artistic director but also took time to tackle the demanding role.
Dave Horak, MacEwan University instructor and Edmonton Actors Theatre artistic director, also directs The Comedy of Errors. In a nod to the past, this play was the first production the 10-person troupe mounted in 1989 to a captive audience of 300. Admission was strictly by passing a hat.
Hamlet is a tragedy that embodies ghosts, murder, madness, revenge, deceit and treachery. It all leads to an invasion from a foreign army and the death of an entire royal family. It’s gruesome to say the least, and is often staged to make a political-social statement.
Was Copithorne taking a few jabs at Trump and the world's state of affairs?
“I can see how you might think that. But I like to stay away from him as much as I can. He’s so overexposed,” she replies.
Comfortable in her role as director, Copithorne quickly segues into why Hamlet fires her passion.
“I love this play. I look at it as a bit of thriller. Hamlet has to figure out if the ghost is telling him the truth. He wants proof of who the ghost is. Is he truly an apparition of his dad or an evil spirit? Once he knows the truth, he feels justified in what he’s doing.”
Any actor playing the Danish prince needs a great deal of confidence as it is one of Shakespeare’s greatest challenges along with Lear and Macbeth.
The role dictates an actor discover the great psychological and emotional depth of a young man straying in and out of insanity. Traditionally a seasoned thespian is cast in the part.
However, Copithorne deviated from tradition and cast the charismatic Hunter Cardinal (Romeo and Juliet), a University of Alberta acting graduate in his mid-twenties.
“I wanted to go with the idea of college students. How a 40-year-old thinks is very different from how a 20-year-old approaches things. It’s interesting to play out how young people with less experience cope with death and all the heartbreak that follows.”
Since women were barred from performing on stage during the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare wrote few female parts. This is the first year Freewill has cast an equal number of men and women requiring a bit of gender bending. For instance, former St. Albert Children’s Theatre alumna Vanessa Sabourin is cast as Rosencrantz, Hamlet’s childhood friend who betrays him.
“If we have the opportunity to cast women in men’s roles, why can’t we explore that? It’s also a good opportunity to explore male and females being friends without having sex. We rarely see that.”
While Hamlet’s gender bending carries a serious tone, Comedy of Errors is strictly for laughs. Dave Horak, who first joined the company acting in King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, today wears the comedy's director’s hat.
Based on an old Roman farce, the play uses a series of tried and true plot devices that vary from separated twins and mistaken identities to slapstick and word play.
“It’s light, frothy and fun,” Horak says.
The comedy tells the story of two sets of identical twins accidentally separated at birth with their twin servants. (Shakespeare fathered one pair of twins and often used a matching pair as comedic plot devices.)
Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in Ephesus. Neither knows this is home to their twin brothers Antipholus of Ephesus and his attendant Dromio of Ephesus.
When the twins from Syracuse meet family and friends of the Ephesus twins, a chain of wild misunderstandings lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, accusations of infidelity, theft, madness and demonic possession.
It sounds similar to television’s reality shows and the cast dresses in flamboyant drag costumes.
“It’s set in the back lot of film studio. That felt to me it needed to be part of this world – lots of action going on and lots of characters populating the stage.”
Horak also enjoyed turning a few ideas upside down such as putting two striking women in the role of the Antipholus brothers with two men as servants.
“It was a question of how to solve the twins problem. We cast actors that were similar. We also wanted to use more women and it works well with Shakespeare looking to explore the self. We look at the fluidity of gender identity. This is a fantasy world where gender or identity doesn’t matter,” Horak explains.
He encourages fans to visit Hawrelak Park for an outdoor adventure filled with unpredictable moments that always ramp up the fun barometer.
The festival runs June 19 to July 15. Comedy of Errors plays odd dates and weekend matinees while Hamlet is on even dates.
