Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
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by Thomas Shadwell, directed by Jeannette Lambermont-Morey
Talk Is Free Theatre, Mady Centre, Barrie
January 5-14, 2017
Don John: “Nature gave us our Senses, which we please:
Nor do our Reason War against our Sense”
Theatre-lovers even in the UK could spend their entire lives without having the chance to see a professional production of a Restoration tragedy. Restoration comedy is hardly revived as much as it should be, but Restoration tragedy remains to most an unknown quantity. Therefore, those in southern Ontario should feel incredibly lucky then that Talk Is Free Theatre, known for its outside-the-box programming, is offering theatre-goers the chance to see a Restoration tragedy and a rare one at that. The play is The Libertine (1675) by Thomas Shadwell (1642-92), best known as the butt of John Dryden’s satire poem Mac Flecknoe (1682). Theatre-lovers who wish to see a well-acted production of a major rarity should make The Libertine a top priority.
The libertine in question is none other than the infamous Don Juan, who first appeared in literature in the play El burlador de Sevilla (c. 1616) by Spaniard Tirso de Molina, a play Shadwell came to know by means of a French adaptation. Nowadays, if people encounter the character of Don Juan on stage at all it is as the Don Giovanni of Mozart’s 1787 opera of that name. Yet, Mozart’s version is only one of many and one of the great values of staging Shadwell’s The Libertine is to provide a powerful alternate view of the character.
Shadwell’s play, a great success in it own time, deserves to be better known for four particular reasons. First, Shadwell’s portrayal of Don Juan, or Don John as he calls him, is perhaps the most negative in stage history. Mozart’s Don Giovanni murders only one character on stage and never beds any of the women he plans to, though he has a long history of rape in the past. Shadwell’s Don John kills so many people on stage it is hard to keep count and has even killed his own father. He does not delude himself that his attraction to women is love as do other Don Juans. It is merely appetite. And he justifies this with a deeply materialist speech right at the start of the play: “Nature gave us our Senses, which we please / Nor do our Reason War against our Sense”. Satisfying his appetite is all that concerns Shadwell’s libertine who, immune to conscience, kills anybody who prevents him from having his way. Thus Don John pronounces himself at the start an atheist, a materialist, a sensualist and ultimately a nihilist since he cares nothing about what happens to him or anyone else. As a social critique, it is his wealth and aristocratic status that allow him to escape so often from justice.
The Libertine is part of a sub-genre of Restoration tragedy known as “horror plays” that put figures of abhorrent character and their deeds on stage such as Nero or Thyestes as examples of behaviour to be shunned. In this the plays follow the idea of the Roman playwright Seneca of a play as an exemplum horrendum. The gloomy atmosphere and the accumulation of violence and gore make these “horror plays” feel like a continuation of the nihilistic vision of Jacobean and Caroline tragedy that ruled the stage before the Puritan Revolution.
Second, Shadwell’s Don John is very unlike other portrayals in that Shadwell gives Don John not just a servant but two like-minded followers. One way in which other dramatists create some sympathy for Don Juan is in showing how completely alone he is. In Shadwell, Don John is essentially the leader of a gang and the mere fact that he has followers is meant to show how dangerously attractive his philosophy is. Thus Shadwell’s Don John is not just an individual aberration but represents the temptation towards chaos that threatens society in general.
Third, the greatest and most positive change Shadwell makes is in not portraying all of the women wronged as helpless victims. In Shadwell’s version, unlike any other, one of Don John’s targets, Maria (the Donna Anna of Mozart) vows to take revenge on Don John herself. Therefore, she and her cousin Flora put on men’s clothing, arm themselves and attack Don John and his comrades when he has barricaded himself in his rooms. Women dressing as men harks back a familiar trope in Shakespeare and when Maria and Flora gird themselves to fight it is as if they are a the more militant sisters of Rosalind and Celia in Twelfth Night. To make Maria a fighter seeking revenge makes her a perfect foil for the sad Leonora (the Donna Elvira of Mozart), who keeps seeking out Don John because she can’t stop loving him.
Fourth, Shadwell’s ending is significantly different from other versions. In Mozart Don Giovanni invites the statue of the Commendatore, Donna Anna’s father whom he killed, the statue arrives and takes the miscreant to hell. In Shadwell, the statue of Don John’s own father whom he killed is invited, attends and issues a return invitation to Don John and his mates. In the final act Don John and his two friends find themselves at the Commander’s tomb where his ghost and all the ghosts of those killed during the action (more than six) have assembled. When Don John refuses to repent, all three are taken to hell. By adding parricide to Don John’s evil deeds, Shadwell makes clear that Don John’s behaviour goes counter to the fundamental values of society. Having all the ghosts of the wronged appear reminds us of the similar scene in Shakespeare’s Richard III, where those killed in the course of the action heap their curses on one who broke all of society’s laws. This way the Commander’s action is not simply a personal revenge but, supported by all the wronged, the revenge of society against an adversary of humanity itself.
To adapt Shadwell’s five-act play to a running time of only 95 minutes and to make it possible for a cast of only eight to play the 15 parts for individuals plus unnamed numbers of shepherds, shepherdesses, officers, soldiers, singers, servants and attendants, director and adaptor Jeannette Lambermont-Morey has make many excisions in the text. Two characters in Shadwell like Clara and Flavia are rolled into one and their prospective husbands omitted. The Hermit and Don Francisco are merged and regendered as the hostess Ernesta. All the unnamed supernumeraries are cut. And the many ghosts that visit Don John are whittled down to four, omitting Don John’s father, so that the ending emphasizes Don John’s offences against women in particular rather than against society in general.
Lambermont-Morey’s adaptation is remarkably successful in preserving the overall character of Shadwell’s play along with scenes that distinguish it from so many other versions of the Don Juan legend. These include Shadwell’s giving Don John two companions, having Maria and Flora taking armed revenge, showing six of Don Juan’s “wives” confronting him at once and staging a shipwreck in which a fleeing Don John and companions are thrown into the sea and swim ashore followed by the pursuing Maria and Leonora.
Two of Lambermont-Morey’s alterations, however, are not helpful. The first is in having the character of Ernesta appear periodically throughout the action singing, whisking in a bowl, chopping meat, before we are introduced to her. Only by reading the programme can a person discover that this old woman is meant to be the same old woman each time (since six of the actors play multiple characters) and that she is a mother preparing for the wedding of her daughter. The purpose of a symbolic figure has to be clear from the production itself without help from the programme.
The other flaw is the omission of the final lines of the play. Lambermont-Morey has the play end with Don John, being sucked last after his comrades into the void. It seems uncharacteristic, both for the genre and for the character, that so egocentric a figure would disappear without making a statement. In Shadwell he does and it is very important:
These things I see with wonder, but no fear.
Were all the Elements to be confounded,
And should all into their former Chaos;
Were Seas of Sulphur flaming round about me,
And all Mankind roaring within those fires,
I could not fear or feel the least remorse.
To the last instant I would dare thy power.
Here I stand firm, and all thy threats contemn;
Thy Murderer stands here, now do thy worst.
On the one hand one can see that Lambermont-Morey hates all that Don John represents so much that she does want to give him the last word (even though these are the last words of the play). What she wants to avoid is any sort of glamorization of Don John as some sort of amoral or existential hero. Yet, Shadwell has already shown that Don John has followers and that Leonora, despite her best will, cannot shake off her love for him. One reason why these words are important is that they underscore the very danger that a figure like Don John represents in that his stance that he is above all social rules is attractive to some and still is today. That’s why the figure is so relevant.
Lambermont-Morey has assembled an extraordinarily talented cast and leads them in delivering well-spoken, physically demanding performances. Chief of these is Jakob Ehman as Don John. He may seem to young or physically too slight to represent such a character, but as soon as he opens his mouth all that is forgotten. He speaks with such calm and control that we wonder what is the force within him that he is controlling. He is like a coiled snake that we fear could strike at any moment and indeed when Ehman’s character strikes it is sudden and deadly. Yet, he can charm women with well-chosen words and looks as easily as he can kill with icy ruthlessness. Ehman’s is a virtuoso performance of a fantastic role.
As Don John’s two interchangeable comrades, Benjamin Blais as Don Antonio and Edward Charette as Don Lopez can’t give their characters distinguishing features that Shadwell hasn’t written, but both suggest that these hangers-on are as obsessed or of the same intellectual calibre as Don John. Friendship with Don John provides the them with access to adventure, rape and murder and that is all the two really care about.
Tim Walker does an hilarious turn as Jacomo (Leporello in Mozart’s opera), Don John’s ever-suffering servant. He vigorously disapproves of his master’s actions and fears the noose, but he fears his master’s wrath even more. He is the comic figure in the grim world of the play but his humour can lighten the atmosphere only briefly before is is crushed again. Two of Walker’s funniest set pieces are his attempting to walk after having exhausted his muscles in swimming to shore and later gorging himself at Ernesta’s table like a pig at a trough.
Tiffany Martin distinguishes her two roles well. Her Flora, Maria’s cousin, is as dashing and furious as Maria while her Clara, Ernesta’s daughter, is painfully naive. Even when we think she may be there only to provide Spanish couleur locale, Theresa Tova is a powerful presence. Once we meet her as Ernesta, we see how Tova makes us see that Ernesta susses out the nature of various people who wash up on her shore, yet keeps this knowledge to herself. The outrage her Ernesta expresses in trying to evict Don John from her premises is fearful, but so is our worry what the consequences will be.
A special highlight of Lambermont-Morey’s production is the inclusion of at least four major sword and dagger fights between Don John and his friends and various attackers. Fight director Simon Fon does an outstanding job of giving the four quite different choreographies and making all of them appear both natural and dangerous. As in Romeo and Juliet, the fights in The Libertine create an atmosphere of violence and lawlessness. Fon has them grow in importance in the climactic battle between Don John and his two mates against Maria and Ernesta which symbolically appears like an unfair battle between women outnumbered by men.
Lambermont-Morey has staged the play in an alley configuration in the Park Place Theatre in the Mady Centre. Cathy Elliott’s set consists of two large square tables, four benches, chairs and a large abstract arch that the actors move about the playing area to suggest quite imaginatively the many different locations. Elliott’s costumes are contemporary casual wear but so chosen as to intimate the outline of Cavalier-era clothing. Lambermont-Morey has wisely not permitted an intermission since once the action begins it inexorably builds to its supernatural climax.
It is wonderful to see an unjustly neglected play so boisterously rescued from obscurity and to feel the emotion that Shadwell’s text inspires in the cast. Praise goes to Lambermont-Morey for rediscovering the play and for judiciously adapting it, to Talk Is Free Theatre for producing it and to the cast for making the play come to life with such enthusiasm and skill. After seeing The Libertine, a play more relevant now than ever, one can only wonder what treasures there are still left to be discovered.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Jakob Ehman as Don John; Tim Walker as Jacomo; Ruby Joy, Mikaela Davies, Tiffany Martin and Theresa Tova as the ghosts of Maria, Leonora, Flora and Ernesta; Jakob Ehman as Don John; Jakob Ehman as Don John and Tiffany Martin as Clara. ©2017 Talk Is Free Theatre.
For tickets, visit www.tift.ca.
2017-01-08
The Libertine