All Men of Genius, Lev AC Rosen

As soon as I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. Not just had to add it to my wish list, or lazily browse the preview - had to read it. Luckily, Reichelt felt the same way and had already taken it out on her library card - then generously and wonderfully renewed it twice so I'd have time to finish it! And boy, was it worth it.

Violet Adams is a bright, headstrong inventor, and spends a lot of time tinkering with gears and springs in her laboratory. Her greatest wish is to become a student at Illyria, a college for scientific geniuses, but - alas - she is a woman and it's sort of the Victorian era and women need not apply to Illyria. Seeing as she is no common woman, however, Violet conspires with her brother, Ashton, to apply in his name, and to don a man's disguise for one year and prove that she is worthy of studying science among London's greatest minds, and may do so as a woman afterwards. Their childhood friend, Jack Feste, is in on the scheme and is also an applicant. Obviously Violet and Jack get in and hi-jinks ensue - especially when Duke Earnest, the headmaster of Illyria, finds himself enamored of Violet while his ward, Cecily, falls for the pretend Ashton!

Yes, not only does this book explore Twelfth Night, but also The Importance of Being Earnest! It is a comedy of manners, with polite conversation precluding any hurt feelings, but with a bawdy underside as so many cross-gendered comedies sometimes forget to include.

First, let me say my heart was SO happy with the way relationships were built in this novel. Characters like Cecily fall in love at first sight (she is, after all, only sixteen), but Earnest and Violet's relationship takes its time to blossom. I'll let you find out why that's a play on words later. Everything was handled deftly and sweetly: Jack's infatuation with Cecily; Toby and Miriam's comfortable affair, and Ashton and Antony's discreet to-do's. Each character is presented, their relationships laid out, and nothing ever felt forced.

And there are so many textual in-jokes - but they weren't just plainly lifted (like how Cecily keeps her diary with her for something interesting to read, and insists to Violet that they simply must be the very best of friends), but also show a real knowledge of the plays they were based on. For example, when Malcolm Volio (a really twisted psychopath) receives his forged love-letter from "Cecily," 

"But in retrospect, it wasn't really so surprising. He was, as she said, a genius, and he did have piercing eyes, not to mention a proud masculine brow like his brother and father, a scientist's brow. It all made sense to him now. Her seeming to never know he existed was pure shyness."

Just like the textual Malvolio doesn't see how Olivia could not love him. Similarly, later, he muses that he may have to take Cecily by force, and thrust himself upon her. Oh - this is not simply your maligned Malvolio, though his character is handled in much the same way (abandoned and imprisoned and forgotten), this is a really sick individual with Malvolio-like tendencies - which actually makes me afraid of the Shakespearean characater.

I loved how well-drawn the characters in this book were, overall, and how naturally the action unfolded. I enjoyed reading it so very much, and I cannot give it higher praise than that.

All Men of Genius

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (September 27, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765327945
• ISBN-13: 978-0765327949

Equivocation, Bill Cain

Last week I was treated to the invited dress rehearsal for Equivocation, now in it's third incarnation with the original cast at Arena Stage. The play took its first breath at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2009, then headed to Seattle Rep in 2010. While it has had a run in New York (with a different cast and director), somehow this cast can't seem to shake this play - and I won't be able to, either.

This play is about the commissioning of a new play. Shagspeare is called before the crippled counselor Robert Cecil to begin work on a plot outlined by King James I: The True History of the Gunpowder Plot. An event which happened only a year or two prior. "I don't write new plays," Shagspeare protests, "I adapt!" The inflammatory piece wreaks havoc on his business partners and fellow artists at the Globe, especially with long-time collaborator Richard Burbage, but also creates a bridge between the playwright and his daughter, Judith - a Wednesday Adams-ish character with a dark sense of humor and a sharp attitude. In trying to write this play in a way that tells the truth without getting anyone killed for treason, Shagspeare interviews the remaining members of the accused plot - a young man named Thomas Winter, and the famous equivocator, Jesuit Father Henry Garnet. Shagspeare is impressed with the man's turn of phrase - of answering without answering - and begs to be taught. "What question are you really answering?" poses Garnet. Amidst betrayal, political danger, entrapment, and artistic ennui, Shagspeare's famous Scottish play begins to take shape.

The whole thing was a tight three hours, with only six actors distributing the roles. Well, Shag and Judith were played by one person, while everyone else had many more parts to play. Each part informed the others, though, and while in some productions a man swapping between playing MacDuff onstage and King James in the audience would be hokey, this was just entrancing. 

I don't want to talk too much about the performances, but the text speaks for itself. Playwright Bill Cain (a Jesuit Father himself) obviously studied Shakespeare's work well. In a time of disappointment that intelligent yet entertaining discussions of Shakespeare's influences, humanity, and work are not available, this play was incredible. My brain buzzed with the possibilities and connections between politics and art - and how they still influence each other today. My heart ached for Shagspeare and Judith, a struggling father-daughter relationship that never got over Hamnet's death. My pulse quickened with the incredibly deft insertions of recognizable text from not only Macbeth, but Richard III, Hamlet, and others.

I loved this play so hard, and I am doing my damnedest to see it again and obtain a copy of the text for myself. I feel at this moment I would clutch it and weep with happiness.

EQUIVOCATION
Trade Copies available at Arena Stage during this run (Nov 18-Jan 1)

Enjoy this youtube clip of Bill Cain and director Bill Rauch discussing the play, and Sub/Text reading materials provided by Arena Stage.

The Beard of Avon, Amy Freed

When I was but a college lass, I went to see a play which cost $12 in a large back room of an old church in a bad part of town. The production was sparse but colorful, the jokes witty and over-the-top silly. I laughed until I cried, and went home thinking about the question of Shakespeare's authorship, but ultimately just giddy with entertainment.

As the controversy surrounding a current film on this same subject began (I'd rather not say anything specific in case of internet creeps looking for a fight), I wasn't too miffed. The authorship question exists and continues to be discussed. Interred with Their Bones makes a stab (a far-fetched, over-complicated stab), and no one will ever be satisfied because no one will ever know until definitive proof is found. Good luck with that. Then the Occupy Wall Street protests grew more heated, and the movie began promoting itself as educational. This is when my ire began to flame. How dare these damn anti-Stra'fordians foist their elitist mumbo-jumbo on my poet, and how dare they pretend that this film would be anything but a costume drama! I had been looking forward to an intelligent portrayal of the question of authorship, not a biased over-wrought telanovella!

I did not wish to review the film, again because there are fighting Oxen out there just looking to pick apart my poet's life and history, and to call me names like religious zealot. (Go see our post on Folger Education about it, and tell me those comments are not from Oxen). But it made me miss this play. The lighthearted spirit in which the potential for a relationship or collaboration or even cover-story between the Earl and the Poet is handled is just lovely. The in-jokes for theatre-types (come on, did Elizabethan actors warm up or do motivational speeches for opening performances like, "just have fun!" ?) are adorable. The wordplay is magnificent, and reminiscent of true Shakespearean wit. I enjoyed reading this play after the awful propaganda of the last month, and if you're looking for an enjoyable approach with just as much "historical accuracy" as the film, pick it up!

The Beard of Avon

• Publisher: Samuel French, Inc. (2004)
• ISBN-10: 0573602581
• ISBN-13: 978-0573602580

Boys from Syracuse (Musical), Rogers and Hart

My familiarity with Rogers and Hart pretty much ends with Rodgers and Hammerstein, though I have heard "Lady is a Tramp" too many times to count, so I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into when I saw a concert performance of this musical this weekend. It's a very cute re-setting of The Comedy of Errors plot with a few modern twists.

I would guess that it was set in the 1940s, given the jazzy tone, and apparently the swinging forties were even more swinging than I thought!

First there's the fleshed out character of Luce - the kitchen wench married to Dromio of Ephesus - who, in Shakespeare's play, is "all grease" and as big as the globe (one of my favorite comic passages in the canon compares her body parts to different parts of the continents). In this musical, Luce is a slim vivacious and hungry (no, not for food) young woman who is completely dissatisfied with her husband's, er, lack of effort as a, erm, husband. [blush!]

Next, the action of the play cuts off for intermission about an hour in with Adriana having unknowingly locked the door on her real husband while taking the stranger, Antipholus of Syracuse, to bed (Luce doing the same with Dromio). Enraged and jealous, Antipholus of Ephesus seeks out the, um, ministrations of the local Courtesan.

I don't know what it was, but I was more than a little disturbed by how no one seemed to notice or care that Antipholus definitely slept with the Courtesan, while Adriana didn't sleep with AofS (he claimed a headache); nor did it bother a soul that Luce is now being unsatisfied by both Dromio brothers. Ick.

Sex aside, the show really is very cute, especially between Antipholus of Syracuse and Luciana, who fall in love at first sight. Their song then, "This Can't be Love," is a catchy simple little tune, and I left still humming it. Well, ok, it's also the reprise at the end of the show. And in the middle. There were a LOT of reprises, and for a 2 hour show (including an intermission!), that's a lot of repetition. 

The story also follows the Shakespearean plot pretty closely, even with the Duke soliciting the town for any help for the Antipholii's father, Aegon, with Shakespeare's own text (thanks for that unnecessary reminder, Dromio). The reveals at the end are rapid-fire... Here are the other twins, you're brothers, I gave you money, no I have your money, no I have your padlock, I'm your father, I'm your mother, no I didn't sleep with your wife, let's ignore where I slept, HURRAY REPRISE IT'S OVERRRRR!

Overall, I probably wouldn't buy the soundtrack or see it again, but it was nice to have seen a musical adaptation of one of the lesser-knowns.

The Boys from Syracuse
Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart
1938 (link to 1963 recording)