Arts & Entertainment

 

 

   

A Play by Play of Bard on

sae *

Vanier Park, May 31 to September 23

Iain Reeve, OP Thespian Courter

B ard on the Beach, one of
Vancouver’s most celebrated summer
arts traditions, returns for its 18th
season, opening with mainstage
plays The Taming of the Shrew and
Romeo and Juliet. Shrew offers up an
incredibly committed take on the play
as a Wild West yarn, while R&J falls a
little bit short as an unevenly modern
take on one of the Bard’s most well-
traveled pieces.

Standing in stark contrast to these
competing tales of love, the studio
stage presents two tales—Julius
Caesar and Timon of Athens—which
offer heavy moral lessons set in the
ancient kingdoms of Rome and Greece,
respectively. These tragedies offer the
most substantial treatments at this year’s
festival and skillfully blend modern
ingenuities with classical cores.

The Taming of the Shrew, one of
Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, is
almost as popular as it is controversial.
The story follows a group of suitors
seeking the hand of the lovely Bianca.
However, her father refuses to allow her
to wed until her older and considerably
more tempestuous sister Kate is
married. Ultimately, the suitors find a

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man shrewish enough to mould Kate
into the role of submissive wife.

The themes of female subservience
in the play have long made it a target
of feminists, and have resulted in many
altered, less patriarchic versions, which
have been performed
over the years.
However, at Bard,
the play — performed
in a Wild-West style
made famous by a
production in 1990
starring Morgan
Freeman and
Tracey Ullman—is
presented with its
original intent intact,
a bold and ultimately
effective decision.

Every piece
of the Old West
ambiance falls
perfectly into place. The costumes are
splendid, bringing to life characters
that each claim a different Western
stereotype. Kate’s father, Baptista, is
played as a Southern plantation owner:
white suit, Southern drawl, and all.
Tranio, servant to and impersonator of
Bianca’s suitor Lucentio, is perfectly

“Julius Caesar
was a fantastic
production that
repeatedly gave
me chills, and not
Just because of the
rain and wind that
awaited us outside.”

portrayed as the surly spitting Mexican.
And Petruchio is a hard-as-nails cowboy
who takes on the task of wrangling the
shrewiest woman of them all. Trust me,
you have not seen Shakespeare until
you have seen it delivered seamlessly
with a Mexican
accent.

Romeo and
Juliet both suffers
and profits from
being so incredibly
popular, even
amongst the work
of history’s most
famous English
playwright. It is a
story that almost
anyone interested
in making a trip
to Vanier Park to
see Shakespeare
knows. However,
it has also been so often repeated and
replicated that it is almost inevitably
cliché. Bard’s production manages to
shed some of this baggage, but still fails
to deliver something truly special.

This production was billed as a
modern take on the classic. I was not
necessarily expecting a stage version of

 

the Beach

 

Baz Luhrmann’s modern remake — he
has his own theatrical visions — but I
was expecting a full-on modern theme.
Instead we end up with a half-hearted
theme where the Prince still kind of
looks and acts like a Prince, and the

set still has more of a classical than
modern theme to it. Romeo, Tybalt, and
Mercutio still sword-fight — they just
do it while looking like they jumped out
of a Gap window.

Most of the actors do a good job of
speaking the language with a modern
flair, , but the best performances come
from the peripheral cast rather than
the main characters. Where Romeo
is a little too emo and pretty-boyish,
Mercutio is brilliantly flamboyant.
Where Juliet is bland and inconsistent,
the Nurse is rash, brutal, and utterly
scene-stealing.

Julius Caesar is a blend of Ancient
Rome, where Caesar of course lived,
and Renaissance Italy, the next time that
a republic flourished in the world. This
doesn’t deviate far from Shakespeare’s
original intentions, as the play was
meant as a fusion of Ancient Rome and
Shakespeare’s England. The simple
stage is adorned with a globe, flags, and
telescopes behind the audience on either

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