Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose
Edinburgh Fringe, 2023

Ex Pede Herculem

Despite his most famous reputation, the biography of William Shakespeare is scanty short on details. A signature here, an obscure anecdote there, it is down to a metemimesial study of the plays & poems themselves to tell us more about the man. The rest, by the way, is just made up, or we might use Tudor-Stuart materielle yet extant to flesh out the meager skeleton of Shakespeare that we have. Create a whole dinosaur from a single tooth, kinda vibe.

& so to Upstart, by Mary Jane Schaefer. First things first, what an absolutely adorable set, one’s receptacle mind is instantly plung’d into that in which Shakespeare plied his pen & trade. The costumes & back-drops are beautiful, & when wedded to Tudor songs & a dialogue fully-form’d of Elizabethean & Jacobean phraseology, the suspension of disbelief is exceptional.

The play consists of two elements. The first of these, & how the play begins, is the elder Judith reminiscing on her famous father. Immediately one is struck by the quality & authenticity of the language which Schaefer has put on the lips of Judith. I mean hearing phrases such as ‘‘twill serve’ – I love that sh!t. The second element of this play is an imagin’d account of Judith’s younger self & her interactions with her famous father – including classic Shakespearean motifs, well Commeddia dell’arte really, of cross-dressing disguises

‘His muse was a trollop who’d ran off with lesser men‘

A major figure in this reworking was a lady of color from London who of course would have been the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets. There’s a great seen when Anne, Shakespeare’s wife, is reading the sonnets c.1609 v- in fact gossipy Stratford villagers are leaving copies outside her house showing her husband not only loved the handsome youth but also the Dark Lady & her wiry hair. Classic stuff, altho’ of course the real Dark Lady was in fact the Turkish noble woman who frees William Stanley from his blasphemical incarceration in Istanbul. Well, that’s what I think anyway!

Yes, an absolute darling of a piece is this – all the performers are adorable to watch & I would advise anyone with a hint of a love for Shakespeare to see this – he really is brought back to life with eloquence & energy better than any cinematic attempt. The humanity of the great brooding poet is on show for all to see. My only gripe was how politely handl’d, or skiff’d over, was the ‘second best bed’ offering by Shakespeare to his wife in his will. This was a perfect chance to kick a nail out of his coffin & hammeringly ram it into Anne’s heart – it was far too nice an ending, but why not anyway?

Damo