Shakespeare without a net adds new kicks to the Bard's classics
BYLINE: By Robert Crew
April 21, 1996
Both are experienced Shakespearean actors who have starred in numerous productions at Ontario's Stratford Festival and elsewhere. Between them, they have played many of the great roles - Hamlet, Henry V, Rosalind, Viola, Desdemona.
Yet both Geraint Wyn Davies and Lucy Peacock look upon working with madcap Shakespearean director Patrick Tucker as a rebirth, a new beginning.
Tucker and partner Christine Ozanne, who run the Original Shakespeare Company, have developed a unique approach to the Bard.
They stage Shakespeare the way Elizabethans might have done (but probably didn't). The cast is given their lines plus three-word cues. There is no collective rehearsal, no blocking of movement around the stage.
"Tell Lucy that when I nod, it's her turn," jokes Davies, via phone from California where he and his family now live.
Davies, charismatic star of the TV vampire cop show Forever Knight, plays Petruchio opposite Peacock's Kate in The Taming Of The Shrew. It runs at Trinity-St. Paul's United Church on three nights only - next Thursday, Friday and Saturday - as part of the du Maurier World Stage festival.
The cast includes such brave souls as David Ferry, Ellen-Ray Hennessy, Yanna McIntosh, Sally Cahill and Richard McMillan.
And Tucker, who directed a production of As You Like It at the World Stage in 1994, has added a new wrinkle this time around: Apart from Peacock and Davies, all the cast will play different roles on two or more nights.
"The first night is adrenalin city, the second night is embarrassingly slick and the third night is usually flat," Tucker says. "I wanted to shake things up a bit."
"It's Shakespeare without a net - without a Monette," quips Davies, in reference to Stratford artistic director Richard Monette.
"I'm in this because it is probably the most scary thing I could possibly do at this time," says Peacock.
Peacock decided to take a break after the 1994 Stratford season. "I was glad to get away when I did. I had been there long enough and I felt I was not moving forward. I was becoming a bit unhappy and cranky, and I knew, having witnessed it over the years with other actors, that it was time to go."
In fact, she says, she was beginning to wonder whether she wanted to continue acting at all.
She's spent much of her break at home with her husband and their two boys - one is almost 5 and the other was born just after Christmas.
Tackling Shakespeare the Tucker way was not only refreshing but just what she needed.
"It's hectic, it's nerve-wracking and it's shaking me out of the euphoric fog that motherhood brings."
Peacock admits she was "reserved" about Tucker's approach to Shakespeare "but now I am completely converted. The text is doing the work and you are not interfering."
At Stratford she had reached the point where "I wasn't getting that scary feeling. I had built up a lot of safety nets. Now, however, "I have butterflies every morning. I am determined to do it, to get those feelings back."
And she hopes to return to Stratford, sooner or later.
"Stratford will never be rid of me, whether they like it or not, just as I will never be rid of Stratford," she says, laughing. "Shakespeare on that stage - it's what I love to do,"
She's appeared in one show - Richard III - with Davies but they were never on stage at the same time. She did do an episode of Forever Knight with him just before Christmas.
And now that Forever Knight has been cancelled, Davies sees Tucker and his approach as "a nice, experimental way" of getting back into theatre and Shakespeare.
Tucker's method of working is "positive reinforcement of the actor's instinct and of the importance of the text."
Not that he or Peacock have actually talked about the play much with Tucker. It's possible they never will.
"He's a loon," says Peacock affectionately, "but a good loon."
Goth fans of Forever Knight will pour into Toronto from around North America to see their favorite vampire, Nick Knight (a/k/a Geraint Wyn Davies).
A mother and daughter are flying in from Alaska to see the show. The Philadelphia fan club has bought 60 tickets, the Virginia fan club has bought 40, and others will be arriving from the midwest, Texas and from across Canada.
"I'm not sure what The Taming Of The Shrew has to do with Nick Knight ," says Davies, " The Taming Of The Vamp, perhaps."
Lucy Peacock makes a stage debut of a different kind today - conducting her first interview. The interview, at the Studio Theatre at 5:30 p.m. as part of the Speakeasy series, is with Joe Dowling, renowned for his work at Dublin's Abbey Theatre and now artistic director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. Dowling has also worked at the Stratford Festival; he directed Peacock in a 1992 production of Uncle Vanya and in the hit production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1993.
By the end of last week, the $1.6-million festival was "very close" to meeting its budget target of $390,000 in box office sales.
Athol Fugard's Valley Song was a virtual sellout and The Waste Land with Fiona Shaw and Robert Lepage's Elsinore are also hot tickets, although seats are still available. An extra performance of Elsinore has been added this afternoon at 1:30 p.m. and an extra of High Life at 2 p.m., April 26.
In addition, the Speakeasy with Sir Peter Hall and Bill Glassco has been rescheduled for 4:30 p.m., April 27.
Copyright 1996 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.