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Shakespeare in a Hawaiian setting
Sunday, June 15, 2008
By JIM BECKERMAN
"PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" COLUMNIST
Shakespeare, these days, has something in common with TV's "Survivor."
PHOTOS BY ALDO MARTINEZ JR./SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
Let the good times roll: Brian Hagerty, left, as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Susannah McLeod as Feste and Tony White as Sir Toby Belch in "Twelfth Night." And that thing is: location, location, location.
Just as "Survivor" tries to outdo itself, each season, with ever more exotic locales, so Shakespeare comes packaged, each season, in ever more fantastic settings: "Taming of the Shrew" in the Wild West, "Macbeth" in the Amazon rain forest, "King Lear" on a Southern pig farm.
Blame the Bard, says Jon Ciccarelli, artistic director of the Hudson Shakespeare Company. He's malleable.
"I think Shakespeare establishes a framework where you can plug in what you'd like to see, and more often than not, it turns out quite well," says Ciccarelli, who will play Duke Orsino in the company's alfresco production of "Twelfth Night: or What You Will," coming to Fort Lee's Monument Park (7 p.m. Tuesday, June 24 and July 1) and Hackensack's Staib Park (7:30 p.m. Wednesday and June 25)..
Jon Ciccarelli of Florham Park will portray Duke Orsino.
Taking a hint from the title, the company has indeed done what they will.
Specifically, they've relocated the Bard's romantic comedy about identical twins, shipwrecks, gender confusion, gentlefolk in love and a drunkard named Sir Toby Belch — set, according to the stage directions, on the island of "Illyria" — to Hawaii.
"The play lends itself to a more laid-back setting, almost a down-the-shore kind of feel," Ciccarelli says. "We wanted it to have a Club Med aspect. We have Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and we also have some fake tropical plants and some beach chairs."
The two other summer productions of this Jersey City-based company show a range of staging possibilities. "King John" (July 7-25) will have a traditional medieval setting, while "Julius Caesar" (Aug. 4-24), featuring an all-female cast, will be done in a mix of Roman and contemporary dress.
Very much, Ciccarelli adds, the way Shakespeare's own actors would have performed it at the Globe Theatre.
"If he was doing 'Julius Caesar,' most of the costumes would have been his present-day," Ciccarelli says. "With a couple of Roman touches, just for the feel. They would not have been very exact."
The belief that Shakespeare belongs in exotic locales is as much a 21st-century notion as the belief that Shakespeare's settings must be scrupulously, historically accurate is a 19th-century one.
Both would have been alien to Shakespeare — who had the town clock striking the hour in "Julius Caesar," 1,500 years before clocks were invented.
"For him the story and the dramatic effect were all," Ciccarelli says. "To have a clock strike in a scene in the middle of the night for him was very effective. As opposed to someone saying, 'Hey what time is it?' "
The key thing about Shakespeare, Ciccarelli says, is that the settings, historical or otherwise, don't really matter. Shakespeare's poetry sets the scene, far better than wood and canvas ever could.
"You don't need a lot of the trappings," he says. "You have it all there in the language."
One thing that does make a difference, Ciccarelli says, is the outdoor production.
Taking a cue from Shakespeare, most of whose plays were staged in open-air theaters, the Hudson Shakespeare Company, founded in 1992 (founder L. Robert Johnson is the current managing director), has made sure that their year-round schedule, which takes them to Hudson, Union and Bergen counties as well as Manhattan and Connecticut, includes plenty of outdoor summer shows.
Nothing like Shakespeare under the stars, says Ciccarelli, a Florham Park resident.
"Whenever we present any play [outside], it sort of takes on an otherworldly feel to it, whereas if you tried to do a Neil Simon play outdoors, it's not really going to pan out," he says. "Shakespeare has that kind of pliability. You can put it outside very minimalistically, and the text itself is designed to really engage the imagination. Especially when our shows start in the evening, our lights kind of create a kind of campfire glow in the stage."
Performances are free; patrons are encouraged to bring folding chairs. In case of rain, Hackensack performances will be at the Hackensack Cultural Arts Center, 39 Broadway, and the Fort Lee shows will be at the Fort Lee Community Center, 1355 Inwood Terrace.
"King John" will be staged at 7 p.m. on July 8, 15 and 22 in Fort Lee and 7:30 p.m. July 9 and 16 in Hackensack. "Julius Caesar" will be staged at 7 p.m. Aug. 5, 12 and 19 in Fort Lee and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 6 and 13 in Hackensack.
