Return to Mecca

There are three places in the world where I consider myself at total peace. The first is the Drama Bookshop in New York, the second is the National Theatre Bookshop in London, and the last is the twin theatres of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Swan Theatre in Stratford upon Avon, where I am today.

I came here as a teenager, as a university student, as a graduate, a drama school trainee director and many other times. Today I’m here to inspire myself as I work through a second draft of my eBook – Approaching Shakespeare.

I’m here to walk through the fields, revisit the tourist attractions and tonight I saw Philip Massinger’s The City Madam at The Swan. I’m curious to learn about Massinger, he wasn’t a contemporary of Shakespeare as such, he was 20 years Shakespeare’s junior, but the production is directed by Dominic Hills who is soon to be Artistic Director at The Citz, in Glasgow, so I thought it might be inspiring.

Now Massinger is no Shakespeare. His verse is looser, the language ever as rich or teeming with intelligence, the wordplay and tools of rhetoric less subtle. Massinger’s plots are not tidy, with minor stories that appear and disappear quickly, arriving only for a moment of bawdy in an otherwise intelligent drama.

And yet. It held my attention for most of 3 hours, which frankly is a bloody miracle. It was very funny and well acted, great fun, and the lead actor playing Luke Frugal impressed me most, because he really was ‘playing’ – working the heightened text with a heightened performance, truthful but larger than life.

Massinger’s work is very much about his own time, with many contemporary mentions of Virginia and the New World. Shakespeare work is also about his own time, but never set there. Always subtextually commenting.

My favourite moment in the entire play was the curtain call, the moment when actors and audience exchange something, a thanks. I love it. But what was a bit disappointing was how the company were quite straight faced with their thanks, very business-like, bordering on superior. But there was the wonder actor who played Lord Frugal (Luke’s elder brother), he just beamed out to all of us, he was clearly enjoying it.

That meant something to me, like he was sharing something of his joy with me, and I was thanking him for his efforts and pains. Too many actors are afraid of the curtain call, they look bashful, even afraid or embarrassed and it shits all over our enjoyment.

It was great to be back in Stratford at the RSC, I’ll return to the studio and the business of my PhD, renewed and reinvigorated and with more excitement for my eBook ‘Approaching Shakespeare’.