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by Ben Power, directed by Michael Shamata

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

August 19-October 1, 2014

           

Mercutio: “I talk of dreams,

    Which are the children of an idle brain,

    Begot of nothing but vain fantasy” (Act I)

Ben Power’s 2009 play A Tender Thing is a bizarre and pointless creation.  It is a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet as if they were an ageing couple long and happily in love but now facing the end of their days.  The paradox is that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are famous dying for love and dying young, their deaths finally putting a halt to the feud between their two families.  Power’s Romeo and Juliet also die for love, but their deaths have no larger context except, perhaps, as support for the right-to-die movement.  The main value of the play is that it gives two seasoned actors the chance to speak lines normally heard only from actors at the beginning of their careers.  The result is that seasoned actors Nancy Palk and Joseph Ziegler, as in Soulpepper’s production, bring our more meaning and nuance in Shakespeare’s verse than too often the case with younger actors. 

The “tender thing” of the title is love, as first mentioned in Act 1 by Mercutio to Romeo, who replies, “Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, / Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn”.   Power’s play, only 75 minutes long, is made up of a collage of speeches from Shakespeare’s play, not restricted only to the words spoken by the “star-cross’d lovers”, along with the odd sonnet and scraps from other works by Shakespeare.  It begins with the tomb scene were the elderly modern Romeo brings a bottle of poison to the bed where the elderly modern Juliet lies.  Then it flashes back only a handful of years to show us what led to this moment.  We learn mostly through mime that Juliet has been diagnosed with a terminal degenerative illness and wants to end her life while she is still healthy.  She urges Romeo to life after her, but he insists that if helps her die, he will die to since life without her will have no meaning. 

There are two essential problems with Power’s concept.  Touching as it may be to see two elderly people negotiating how they will end their lives, the very banality of the situation undercuts the grandeur of the verse.  Power’s notion is clearly that the verse will elevate and ennoble the situation, but, unfortunately, the contrast between the characters’ actions and their mode of speech is too great.  Shakespeare’s lovers speak in a heightened form because for them the experience of love and then the prospect of death are extraordinary.  Power’s characters have both been lucky enough to live a long life full of love and the prospect of death is no surprise.

The second problem is that the better you know your Shakespeare the less likely you are to become involved with the play.  Because of the patchwork nature of Power’s script, Shakespeare-lovers will likely find themselves mentally footnoting each passage as it appears and reappears.  Power has his Juliet announce her medical diagnosis with the lines, “I have been feasting with mine enemy, / Where on a sudden one hath wounded me”.  Those who know the play will realize that Power has transferred to Juliet a line Shakespeare wrote for Romeo to say to Friar Laurence in Act 2.

Power’s Romeo, like Shakespeare’s is plagued with bad dreams and is also afraid that his luck in catching Juliet at her balcony is like a dream: “I am afeard. / Being in night, all this is but a dream, / Too flattering-sweet to be substantial”.  Power uses this as an excuse to transfer wholesale to his elderly Juliet the famous Queen Mab speech that Mercutio addresses to Romeo in Act 1.  While it is great to hear Nancy Palk speak Mercutio’s lines with such clarity, they do not suit the character of an elderly Juliet at all unless we are meant to believe she has a peculiar penchant for whimsy. 

In a similar way, Power shows us the elderly Romeo leafing through old books in search of a poison to buy.  Power uses this unlikely set-up as an occasion to transfer Friar Laurence’s long monologue about the power of herbs to the old Romeo.  Laurence’s speech does mention poison (“Poison hath residence and medicine power”), but its purpose is to relate the natural world to that of mankind: “Two such opposed kings encamp them still / In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will; / And where the worser is predominant, / Full soon the canker death eats up that plant”.  The Friar’s last words are clearly meant to apply to Romeo who enters immediately after them, since young man is filled with “grace and rude will”.  How, in any way, do they apply to either of Power’s elderly lovers where “rude will” plays no part in their decisions?

Hearing such famous long set speeches from Shakespeare’s play assigned to the elderly lovers in Power’s play creates the suspicion that he is vainly trying to eke out his silly concept to a decent length.  So, too, is the impression created by an interlude where Power’s Romeo and Juliet decide to sing “O mistress mine”, better known as Feste’s song in Twelfth Night.  Another case is when Power’s Romeo suddenly launches into Shakespeare’s sonnet 73, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” which at least has the advantage of summing up Power’s theme the strength of love in old age: “This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well, which thou must leave ere long”.       

To enjoy the play you have to accommodate yourself to Power’s radical restructuring of Shakespeare’s text and the attention it constantly calls to Power’s own cleverness and to the banality of his elderly couple’s situation.  You also have to ignore the play’s several false endings that make you wonder if the two are finally dead yet.  If you can do this, you can appreciate the play pretty much as you would a fine reading of Shakespeare by two experienced actors.  Power give his Juliet a wider range in moving through fond memories to pain, seeming madness and tranquility.  Palk speaks the verse beautifully, carefully emphasizing the parallels between love and death that are so common in Shakespeare’s play.  Power’s Romeo has a narrower range to encompass that moves from befuddlement to awe and resignation.  Ziegler also speaks the verse well, though perhaps with less clarity and emphasis than does Palk.

The production itself is beautifully designed by Shawn Kerwin with a bed and a doorway as its two main features, the two symbolically related since love and death are associated with both.  In such a spare set, Michael Walton’s lighting wonderfully enhances the changing moods of the play.  To give the actors a break from speech, Monica Dottor has choreographed several short interludes for Palk and Ziegler to dance together.  These I found more effective than anything the actors spoke.  It made me wonder whether a better way to treat this topic would be through dance and avoid the distractions of a jumbled repurposed text entirely.

Power’s play does provide a showcase for two mainstays of Soulpepper’s company, husband and wife in real life.  Yet, so would a reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609) or a reading of one of his narrative poems like Venus and Adonis (1593) or The Rape of Lucrece (1594).  In that way one could bring to an audience poetry by Shakespeare that had not already been written for the stage.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Joseph Ziegler as Romeo and Nancy Palk as Juliet; Nancy Palk as Juliet and Joseph Ziegler as Romeo. ©2014 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.ca.