Timeless Shakespeare
'The Merry Wives of Windsor' is timeless and real
|
|
Clarke Jordan is Falstaff while the women who foil him, left to right, are Morgan Irons, Robbie Harold and Susannah Blachly, in Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” presented by Echo Valley Community Arts’ Shakespeare in the Hills project, March 13-15 in Plainfield and March 19-21 in St. Johnsbury. PHOTO BY DAVID KLEIN |
Toolbox
By Jim Lowe Times Argus Staff - Published: March 6, 2009
Shakespeare has remained timeless because the characters and emotional situations are real. Even the comedies, like “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” are filled with the people of now as well as then.
“When you walk in and see this play you will recognize people,” Tom Blachly explained. “They’re not that far from our own lives. And the town is a recognizable town – it’s not that far from Montpelier. Everybody has a role to play that contributes to the vitality of the community in some way – they have a function.
“That’s one thing I really want to emphasize, the recognizability of it all.”
Blachly will direct William Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” for Echo
Valley Community Arts’ Shakespeare in the Hills project. Featuring a cast of veteran local actors, performances will be March 13-15 at Goddard College’s Haybarn Theater in Plainfield, and March 19-21 at St. Johnsbury Academy’s Fuller Hall.
Sir John Falstaff (Clarke Jordan), down on his luck, hatches a scheme to raise funds. He will seduce Mistress Ford and Mistress Page (Morgan Irons and Susannah Blachly) in an attempt to get at their husbands’ money. The two women compare their letters, however, and finding them identical, hatch a plan of their own to make a buffoon of the knight.
“We’re having a lot of fun with it,” Blachly said. “It’s a stellar cast of central Vermont characters.”
The cast also includes Peter Fischer, Robbie Herald, David Klein and Vince Rossano. The setting and costumes are Elizabethan, and. madrigal singers, directed by Susan Reid, will perform before and during the performance.
“We’re going to have a surprise visit by Queen Elizabeth,” Blachly said. “David Schütz, as Shakespeare, will introduce the queen.”
Shakespeare in the Hills’ purpose is to introduce people to Shakespeare. In addition to the planned annual production of a Shakespeare play – “The Merry Wives of Windsor” is the second so far – the organization runs summer Shakespeare camps for children. Classes in Shakespeare, voice, movement and text interpretation culminate in a full production by the kids.
Blachly got his start in Shakespeare early. Although his debut at age 9 was in “The 13 clocks” as Prince Zorn of Zorno at the New School in Plainfield, the following year he played Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” That production, also at the New School, was directed by Blachly’s father, Unadilla Theatre of Marshfield’s founder and director Bill Blachly. The next year, the young Blachly played Prospero in the school’s production of “The Tempest.”
“That’s when I got hooked on Shakespeare,” Blachly said. “I’m never very far from the stage. Shakespeare is in my blood.”
As an adult, Blachly’s passion for Shakespeare continued. At Unadilla, a summer theater that mixes professionals and amateurs, Blachly has played a variety of roles including a stellar turn in the title role of “Henry V.” Beginning in 1992, Blachly directed three Shakespeare plays in three years at Unadilla: “Measure for Measure,” “Love’s Labours Lost” and. “Cymbeline.”
“I love it,” Blachly said “I just find Shakespeare so satisfying. He makes me think; he makes me feel; he keeps me on my toes.
“He’s so challenging, yet in an exciting, stimulating way,” Blachly said.
Directing Shakespeare has its own particular challenges and rewards.
“There are so many people to try to figure out where they go on stage,” Blachly said. “What they do in every rehearsal is a new experience.”
You also learn in doing. Previously, he had thought of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” as superficial, a silly farce.
“It doesn’t have the depth of ‘King Lear’ obviously,” Blachly said. “But, it’s still Shakespeare, and these characters are real people. There are themes that run through the play that you can find and latch onto. He makes statements about life.”
Blachly finds that community is central to “Merry Wives.”
“There’s a community of Windsor and they manage to keep the town going,” he said. “It’s very much a down-to-earth real play in a real-life setting. In fact, it’s the only play that Shakespeare wrote that is set in a recognizable Elizabethan town.”
There are no characters from the court or from fantasy worlds, so common in Shakespeare.
“These are just basically middle class people living in a middle class town doing their thing,” Blachly said. “Falstaff waltzes into it from another world so he has to be corrected; there’s that sense of socialization that you find in the play – but not necessarily in a bad way.
“You can look at it from both perspectives,” Blachly said. “There is a sense that the town takes care of itself and aberrant behavior was restrained or corrected in some way.”
The challenge is to balance the realism and the comedy.
“I don’t want to take away from the fact that these are real people, and I don’t want to take away from the language,” Blachly said. “Of course, there is a fair amount of farce in the play: There’s slapstick, and there’s physical comedy.
“But, what interests me is that these are real people dealing with real situations,” he said. “There’s humor in that too.”