Katherine W Scheil

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and: Henry V (review)

brimmed black hat, also played the scene for laughs and there was accordingly little sense to Malvolio’s final desire to be revenged. As the play drew to its expected closure of heterosexual coupling, the additional lack of any sense of challenge to the conservative values of the upper classes (social interrogation that this production consistently avoided) was most evident: Orsino came to the final scene wearing a casual beige pinstripe suit and white leather shoes. Olivia matched him, tonally, in a spotless white jacket. The production thus chose sartorially to confirm that this very posh Illyria was a place in which nothing could be contaminated by dirt or malice. Yet despite its deft cleanliness and some very competent acting, the production left me cold. In a review of December 12th 2008, Daily Telegraph critic Charles Spencer claimed that: “the Donmar has produced a Night close to perfection.” Quite so, but I for one did not want the near-perfect Romantic Comedy it offered; not least because this play at its best should show audiences quite clearly that the world is a place not only of love, but also of misunderstanding, manipulation, and misery; a place in which fathers and brothers are lost, in which normative social order crushes individuality, and in which personal histories can and do transpire as blanks. In short, a really good production of Twelfth Night should show us that nothing and nobody is perfect and that love does not conquer all, nor can it always be attained. Unfortunately, Grandage’s production did none of this.

Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century ed. by Gail Marshall (review)

‘postdramatic theatre.’ An approach that looks beyond a hierarchy of textual fidelity allows her to more closely examine the nuances of what she considers ‘reconfigurations’ (137) of Shakespeare and the implications of what, citing Terence Hawkes, contemporary directors might ‘mean by’ Shakespeare (12). These meanings are never fully unpacked in this book, which (not atypically for the series to which it belongs, Champ théâtral) concludes by articulating several promising directions in which it could be extended. One hopes that March and other researchers will continue to explore this fecund and under-harvested field, perhaps in English or with translations that will make this scholarship available to the wider population of Shakespeareans outside France. In the meantime, readers not equipped for March’s lucid and elegant French prose will find an English article, an earlier version of some of her findings, in volume 4 of Shakespeare en Devenir.

The Cult of Kean (review)

An upstart actor loved by the masses, who donned American Indian dress and redecorated his house as a seraglio with personal sex slaves in preparation for a role, fed fresh meat to his pet African lion, and planned to transform society “one drunken night and four ruined women at a time” (82), Edmund Kean—in his lives and afterlives—is ripe for analysis. In his illuminating, fascinating, and compelling study The Cult of Kean, Jeffrey Kahan examines the rumors, fantasies, and truths surrounding this eccentric and talented actor whose “life was a public show” (2). Kahan’s sources include previously unpublished letters from Kean’s wife as well as numerous documents from the author’s personal collection. As Kahan demonstrates, though Kean lived only 43 years, different “Keans” have been constructed with these and other materials, both by Kean and by others, and “we are still living . . . in a Keanian world of illusion” (10). Although Kahan’s most significant contribution is his analysis of various “Keanian event[s]” (4), The Cult of Kean might also serve as a model for an extended study of the effects of individuals on theatre and cultural history. Kahan does not organize his study chronologically, but rather divides it into seven chapters on different aspects of the actor’s “mythography” (10), from boxing to sex. Born to an actress-prostitute and raised by actress Charlotte Tidswell (“Aunt Tid”), Kean grew up at Drury Lane, learning the craft of acting behind the wings and debuting as an imp in John Philip Kemble’s 1794 Macbeth. As “The Celebrated Theatrical Child,” the young Kean performed with his aunt at Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Notoriously short (5’4”), Kean struggled during the early part of his adult career in provincial theatres, accumulating both debt and children, returning to London in 1814 to a surprisingly successful reception. In Chapter 1, “Bare-Knuckle Kean,” Kahan discusses how Kean constructed himself as “a brawler who had fought his way up through the provincial ranks” (16). He further developed this sportive image by mandating in 1817 that Drury Lane stage prizefights on Monday evenings, and perhaps even boxing in matches after performing Shakespeare. Whether or not he actually boxed at Drury Lane is irrelevant; Kean “used the aesthetics of the boxing match to change the way his audiences judged his acting,” characterizing himself as “an antiestablishment figure; someone who was taking perilous risks” in a new kind of theatre as a “spirited contest with a winner and a loser” (16–17). Kahan argues that this at-

The Merchant of Venice (review)

The Merchant of Venice Presented by the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota. March 10–May 6, 2007. Directed by Joe Dowling. Set by Riccardo Hernández. Costumes by Paul Tazewell. Lighting by Matthew Reinert. Sound by Scott W. Edwards. Original music by Keith Thomas. With Robert Dorfman (Shylock), Michelle O’Neill (Portia), Ron Menzel (Bassanio), Richard S. Iglewski (Antonio), Lee Mark Nelson (Gratiano), Sally Wingert (Nerissa), Jim Lichtscheidl (Lancelot Gobbo), Mark Rosenwinkel (Old Gobbo), Christine Weber ( Jessica), Matthew Amendt (Lorenzo), William Sturdivant (Prince of Morocco), Stephen Pelinski (Prince of Arragon), and others.