Current Theatre Notes, 1958-1959

Abstract

HAT Shakespeare is of an age but for all time is attested to by this ninth annual survey of nearly three hundred Shakespearian productions during the I958-i959 season in twenty-four countries around the world. And not only in volume and popularity of the plays today does Ben Jonson's tribute to his fellow playwright hold true. The productions bring out both the enduring universal values and also, as has been the case in every age, pertinent contemporary applications. Thus our current survey lists a production of The Tempest at the Popular Theatre in Krakow, Poland, using visual terms of modern art to show Prospero as a man of modern science and Ariel as a symbol of free human thought in bondage to the scientist and regaining his freedom at the end. A highlypraised French production of King Henry IV, Parts One and Two, by Roger Planchon, utilized modern stage techniques of Bertolt Brecht's epic theatre to present the action as symbolic of the decay of a state. Julius Caesar has been popular for many years as a play of modern political significance, and its modern-dress performance at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, indicates that the popularity continues. And at Howard Payne College in Brownwood, Texas, a drama professor from England, Alex Reeve, conceived the idea of performing A Midsummer Night's Dream in the setting and costumes of cowboys and Indians of the American Wild West, and toured the production in England with great success. In Milwaukee, Mayor Frank Zeidler indicated his own interest in and knowledge of Shakespeare by modernizing the script of Macbeth for a production by the Milwaukee Players. As the notes on the productions indicate, more and more directors reflect in their staging the Elizabethan practice of uninterrupted flow of action from scene to scene and in their setting such features of the Elizabethan playhouse as the inner and upper stages, the platform stage, and the unlocalized locale. The University of Miami's Ring Theatre reconstructed the approximate area and features of the Elizabethan stage for their As You Like It, while Henry IV, Part One, at Loyola University in Chicago, although presented on a proscenium stage, incorporated in its setting the platform, portals, study, and chamber of Shakespeare's stage. In England, Michael Croft's Youth Theatre, made up of young people, uses boy actors in the female roles after the Elizabethan practice. Any year of Shakespearian production in the world is a banner one in which the two greatest actors on the English-speaking stage appear in plays by Shakespeare. Sir John Gielgud brought to America his production of Much Ado About Nothing and starred as Benedick. The production, which originated at the Stratford Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and toured with great