Basquiat Cases: Hamlet, Doctor Faustus, and The Alchemist at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Abstract

Basquiat Cases: Hamlet, Doctor Faustus, and The Alchemistat the Royal Shakespeare Company Grace Godwin HamletPresented by The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. 03 12– 08 13, 2016. Directed by Simon Godwin. Designed by Paul Wills. Lighting designed by Paul Anderson. Composed by Sola Akingbola. Fights by Kevin McCurdy. With James Cooney (Rosencrantz), Bethan Cullinane (Guildenstern), Paapa Essiedu (Hamlet), Griffiths (Laertes), Byron Mondahl (Professor of Wittenberg/English Ambassador), Tanya Moodie (Gertrude), Cyril Nri (Polonius), Natalie Simpson (Ophelia), Clarence Smith (Claudius), Ewart James Walters (Ghost/Gravedigger), and others. Doctor FaustusPresented by The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. 02 4– 08 4, 2016. Directed by Maria Aberg. Designed by Naomi Dawson. Lighting designed by Lee Curran. Music by Orlando Gough. Fights by Kate Waters. With Will Bliss (Valdes/Good Angel/Scholar), Jade Croot (Helen of Troy), John Cummins (Cornelius/Evil Angel/Friar), Sandy Grierson (Doctor Faustus/Mephistopheles), Nicholas Lumley (Wagner/Friar), Oliver Ryan (Doctor Faustus/Mephistopheles), Timothy Speyer (Pope), Eleanor Wyld (Lucifer/Scholar/Friar), and others. The AlchemistPresented by The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. 05 26– 08 6, 2016. Directed by Polly Findlay. Designed by Helen Goddard. Lighting designed by Charles Balfour. Composed by Corin Buceridge. Fights by Kate Waters. With John Cummins (Ananias), Richard Leeming (Abel Drugger), Mark Lockyer (Subtle), Tom McCall (Kastril), Joshua McCord (Dapper), Siobhan McSweeney (Doll Common), Ken Nwosu (Face), Ian Redford (Sir Epicure Mammon), Tim Samuels (Sir Pertinax Surly), Timothy Speyer (Tribulation Wholesome), and others. [End Page 675] The summer saw a series of major auctions, including one in New York that shattered the record price for a canvas. Fixated on the eye-popping bottom lines, publicity pieces hyping the sales barely registered that 2016 was also a major Basquiat anniversary, marking thirty-five years since he achieved gallery representation and merited the Artforumprofile that brought his work to the attention of connoisseurs with little access to the SAMO©—a portmanteau/epocope for “same old shit”—tagged graffiti with which the artist made his name. In contrast, anniversaries were very much in the news in Stratford-upon-Avon where, for the quadricentennial of Shakespeare’s death, more of the “SAMO” simply would not do. The most high-profile event was Shakespeare Live!, a starry evening with a title that could be read as a descriptor of the April 23 BBC broadcast, or a hortatory appeal for a resurrection at Holy Trinity Church. Among the scenes, songs, and dances was a cheeky sketch wherein a gloom of Hamlets debated the ictics of “To be or not to be.” Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant, Rory Kinnear, and Sir Ian McKellen represented experienced Danes; Dames Harriet Walter and Judi Dench teased what might have been; Tim Minchin provided comic relief; and HRH Prince Charles himself tottered on stage to offer royal resolution. The company of royals and Shakespeareans ostensibly assembled to tutor Paapa Esseidu, the first black RSC Hamlet, in a production that overtly referenced the year’s other anniversary artist and his assertion that “the black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings” (qtd. in McGuigan 32). Though the influence was less obvious, traces of Jean-Michel Basquiat also appeared in Maria Aberg’s breath-taking Faustusand Polly Findlay’s vigorous Alchemist, rendering all three plays and their protagonists a trio of unlikely Basquiat Cases. Though born in New York to a Haitian father and mother of Puerto Rican background, Basquiat was adamant that his “roots come from Africa” (qtd. in Fretz 151), and summer 2016 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the artist’s dealer-arranged visit to that continent. RSC director Simon Godwin acknowledged his own star’s Ghanaian heritage by placing Elsinore in a West African Denmark, all hazy orange skies, overworked ceiling fans, and fervently chirping insects. Bernardo and “Francisca” exchanged the text’s “bitter cold” (1.1.6) for the djembe/dunun drums that signaled the Ghost, the large machine gun of the soldier delivering letters to Horatio lent fearsome plausibility to pirates lurking off Cape Verde rather than in the North Sea, and the wooden masks and syncretic...