"Shakespeare in Love" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Oregon Shakespeare Festival photo by Jenny Graham

I love the movie Shakespeare in Love. It's a wonderful, fanciful tribute to love and language and theater. But I have to admit some trepidation when I learned that it was being adapted to the stage. I know it was staged at last year's Stratford Festival, which suggests some credibility, but this year was my first chance to see it staged, at Ashland.

The Play

The play is mostly quite true to the movie screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. And that's a good thing. You don't really want to mess with the wit and flow of a Stoppard script. Of necessity the story is a bit more constrained in locations and scene changes, but that is handled well, and some of the minor characters (such as Rosaline) are gone. And at least one of the lesser-but-popular movie characters, John Webster (Preston Mead) has a bigger role.

But the story still centers on young Will Shakespeare (William DeMerritt) and his writer's block, and Viola de Lesseps (Jamie Ann Romero) and her obsession with love, poetry, and Shakespeare. Christopher Marlowe (Ted Deasy) still shows up to give writing advice, among other things. And there are tons of cute references to various lines and themes of Shakespeare's other plays. They have cut back a bit on the racier scenes from the movie to make it all friendlier to a general audience. But in all, it's largely the same story line.

The Production

As one expects from an OSF production (particularly one of the almost year-long main indoor shows), the production values are high: pretty fancy set, lots of actors, great costumes, and so on. The quality of the acting is quite excellent all around. OSF regular Kate Mulligan gets a turn as Queen Elizabeth, and quite holds her own in the role Judi Dench originated on film.

There are a couple of ways I think the play, or at least this production of the play, manages to surpass the movie. First, the intimacy of the stage (and the set that mimics a cozy Elizabethan theater) brings home both the sort of wild-and-woolly atmosphere of a theater company of the period, and also manages to emphasize the difference between the quite amateurish efforts of some of the common players and the exaggerated polish of the stars such as Alleyn (James Ryen) and Burbage (Kevin Kennerly). Second, by being a self-consciously staged production, they can play with some theater conventions and have, for example, Burbage hamming it up, playing to the house, calling for an anachronistic spotlight, and so on. As such, the tribute to theatrical art seems more genuine when presented on stage.

And finally, by having the staged scenes from Romeo and Juliet acted out in front of us, instead of on film, there is a extra poignancy to them, particularly the suicides in Act V. We are seeing Will and Viola, not just some actors playing Romeo and Juliet. We have a lot more invested in them, and it makes it much more powerful, which I hadn't expected.

Bottom Line

The play is a lot of fun, and worth seeing just for that. If you're a fan of the movie, you shouldn't be disappointed. And if you're a fan of Shakespeare, there are lots and lots of little items you can pick up in the staging and the script that will delight you. And finally, like its movie predecessor, the show stands as a tribute to the value of art and inspiration, both for the artist and the audience, and does so both eloquently and humorously. The sense of community among the actors is palpable, both as the rival companies join forces, and particularly when the actors learn of the death of Marlowe.

There is a lot to like here, and I recommend it highly. It is one of those rare productions that greatly exceeds both my expectations and my hopes.