Shakespeare Event

Shakespeare Event

As befits English ex-pats, the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare's death had to be celebrated locally in some way and the Beaumont English library duly took note and staged its event on the 8^th of May. Fifty one people attended, both French and English, so those responsible for the publicity certainly did their work. Various library members recited sonnets or excerpts from plays and there were Shakespearean songs and even some nibbles exemplary of the period; and muscat from Beaume de Venise substituted well for mead. The whole proceedings, masterminded by friend Jo, went off extremely well and seemed to be greatly appreciated by the audience. A good time was had by all.

I read Mark Anthoy's forum speech from Julius Ceaser. However, there was something else that I really wanted to do for which there was no time in the programme. Jo would have killed me if I'd done it unannounced. (Being a kind person she would have killed me humanely but I decided not to risk it.) I wanted to recount my personal experience of acting in a Shakespeare play, a most noteworthy event since it was the evening the MacBeth tragedy was turned into a comedy. That is quite a feat, as I am sure you will admit.

I went to a boys' grammar school, a rather traditional one. Every year there was a school play and every second year it had to be a Shakespeare play. One year that I took part the play was MacBeth. The school had three or four boys with genuine claims to be able to act and four or five others who would have a reasonable go at it. Now, if you've ever had a look at casts for Shakespeare's plays you may notice that they all have one thing in common: they are long. Adding up our actual and potential actors we found that we were around 30 short for MacBeth. Where to find the extra bodies?

Amateur sportsmen are generally loyal to their team and loyalty, like patriotism, is an attribute that can be usefully abused. So the rugby team was approached. “The school needs you; do it for the school; you owe it to the school”. So we had another fifteen on the cast list but still needed the same again. A sometimes useful attribute of first year boys is that they are generally small and can be bullied. “I saw you talking in Assembly; do you want a detention or do you want to volunteer for the school play?” Wise choice. That gave us the full cast that we needed.

It should be pointed out that many of the characters in Shakespeare's casts are essentially “extras” and have little or nothing to say, except perhaps something like “yes my lord”. Even rugby players can be trained to say that in a couple of weeks. This is where we cast our “volunteers”.

Those familiar with MacBeth will remember that towards the end of the play the rival armies (actually about 8-10 soldiers of each) troop onto and off the stage in successive scenes, hearing what a messenger has to say, being exhorted, or whatever. We hadn't made one army out of rugby players and one out of first year boys as that would be giving the game away; it would have been obvious who would win. So we mixed them up. The result was a succession of scenes in which two motley crews consisting of some hefty 6ft rugby players, looking rather formidable in their military gear, and some diminutive first year boys, lagging behind and dragging their swords behind them because they were too heavy to carry, trooped on and off the stage. The audience loved it. They howled with laughter and brought the house down. And so we turned MacBeth into a comedy.

There was one piece of isnpired casting in all this, and that was me. I was cast as a witch; in fact the first (lead) witch. I was going through puberty at the time and never knew whether the voice that came out of me was going to be a growl or a squeak. Ideal for a witch. I am still immensely proud of having been the lead witch in the first performance of MacBeth as a comedy. We never got to do Hamlet when I was at school but you can be sure that, if we had, it would have been exceptional.