Arts Life

ON STAGE IN CANADA from page 51

ly adds to the ambiance of the
Shakespearean comedy, she said. "I
sing a little bit at the end, but the
bulk of the singing is done by the
boys. It's so great — maybe because
you rarely hear a group of men singing
in a stage production like this.
"And they sound really good."
The part of Audrey is Condllin's
first really juicy role since coming to
Stratford as an apprentice soon after
graduating from college. But she didn't
mind waiting.
"Being an apprentice is a beautiful
learning process," she said.
As an apprentice, she was involved
for two years in ensemble work and
understudying other actors' parts. Last
year, she had small parts in the
Shakespearean plays Timon of Athens
and Cymbeline.
"I really like understudying, and it's
worth every minute, watching actors
like [Stratford veterans] Martha Henry
and Diane D'Aquila," Condllin said.
In her four years at Stratford,
Condllin has been one of small but
cohesive group of Jewish cast members
and others. "My culture is so impor-
tant to me," she said.
A Humanistic Jew, she was raised in
Toronto's Secular Jewish Association,
where she attended classes and was

based, Schulman and her assistants
Jennifer Waiser, who plays Little Red
one of eight students in the b'nai
determined that Dolly was an Irish
Into
the
Woods.
Ridinghood in
mitzvah class. While a student in
immigrant. Her first husband,
Windsor, she also was active in Jewish
the late Efrim Levi, was the love of her
activities, including soloing on violin
New
Interpretation
life.
— another talent she's nurtured since
"Was he Jewish? We take the position
"Working at Stratford is very different
childhood — for several years at Kol
that he was," Schulman said.
than working on Broadway — it's
Nidre services.
completely ideal," said Susan H.
Among the other Jewish cast mem-
ON STAGE IN CANADA on page 55
bers is Adrienne Gould. In As You Like Schulman, who directs this season's
Hello,
Dolly.
production of
It, Gould plays the part of Phebe, the
"When you work here, it's
rustic shepherdess who falls in love
just
about the work," she said.
with the young shepherd Ganymede.
Clockwise from top:
"There are no commercial
However, since Ganymede is really the
At Stra t ford, Laura
pressures. You make the deci-
noblewoman Rosalind in disguise,
Condllin is Audrey
sions and that's that."
Phebe consents to marry Silvius, a real
and Adrienne Gould is
"At the Festival Theatre
shepherd, who has loved her all along.
Phebe in Shakespeare's
[Stratford's largest venue], I
In her sixth Stratford season, Gould
As You Like It";
have costume people, props,
has also landed the female lead in The
Jennifer Waiser is
scenery every single day.
Tempest, playing the young, innocent
Little Red Ridinghood
We've
been working on the
Miranda opposite Stratford legend
in Sondheim's
William Hutt, in the role of her father, set since the day I got here,
"Into the Woods."
back in March. That's
the mysterious and magical Prospero.
unheard of in commercial
Gould is one of three siblings who
theater — on Broadway, you get
have all performed at Stratford. Last
season, along with flying 36 feet in the three weeks at the most."
Having the luxury of long,
air in A-Midsummer Night's Dream, she
leisurely
chats with cast and
The
Swanne
(part
three)
played Dot in
directors
leads to a deeper
The
Count
of
Monte
and Marie in
understanding of the shows she
Cristo.
Other Jewish performers at Stratford directs, Schulman said.
Going back to Thornton
this season include Sammy Rosen,
Wilder, who wrote the original
Gabriel Wolinsky and Evan Stillwater,
play on which Hello, Dolly is
all making their Stratford debuts, and

SHAKESPEARE from page 51

go to college," he said.
While at Cambridge, Greenblatt acted in an
amateur theatrical group called Footlights with
comedian Eric Idle and others who went on to
start the comedy group Monty Python. "In the
early episodes of Monty Python, my name pops up
occasionally," he said. (In a remnant of the British
anti-Semitism so evident in The Merchant of Venice,
Shakespeare's most problematic play, the name
Stephen J. Greenblatt is used as a joke.)
Will in the World devotes a chapter to The
Merchant of Venice, exploring its historical and per-
sonal roots as well as the particular spin
Shakespeare puts on the story.
The literary precedents for The _Merchant of
Venice can be found in an Italian story about a
Jewish usurer, as well in as Marlowe's The Jew of
Malta and a folk-play known simply as The Jew.
Most people in England at the time had never
seen a Jew, Greenblatt said, making the analogy of
the "big bad wolf" as stock villain in cartoons and
fairy tales — even though most of us in America
have never seen a wolf.
"The fact is that play is absolutely saturated with
the anti-Semitism of the era," he said.
Unlike other versions of the story, in
Shakespeare's play, Greenblatt writes, "the audience
is brought in too close for psychological comfort to
the suffering figure. Spattered by Shylock's excla-
mations, it cannot get to the distance appropriate

for detached amusement."
The 1594 conviction for spying
and subsequent public execution of
Ruy Lopez, Queen Elizabeth's per-
sonal physician, likely influenced
Shakespeare as well.
The Portuguese-born Lopez
was charged with conspiring
with the king of Spain to poi-
son the queen. A practicing
Protestant, Lopez had been
born Jewish. Although the
charges were likely untrue,
motivated by political rival-
ry and Catholic/Protestant
conflicts, Lopez's Jewish
roots made his guilt
more believable,
Greenblatt writes.
Contemporary
accounts of the execu-
tion in central
London quote
Lopez as insisting
he loved the
Queen "as much as
I love Jesus Christ."
Spectators mocked him, taking this as
an admission of guilt by a Jew.
"Shakespeare's company was in London when

Lopez was executed, and it's not unlikely, with
3,000 people at the execution, he was
there as well," Greenblatt said.
The most abhor-
rent figures in The
Merchant are those
who mock Shylock
when he expresses
universal human feel-
ings, Greenblatt notes.
In addition to the tra-
ditional figure of the Jew
as villain, Greenblatt
unearths evidence that
Shakespeare's own father
had been twice accused of
moneylending, which was
illegal and generally despised.
Thus the redeeming qualities
of The Merchant of Venice.
Hating the father/usurer, yet still
finding something human in him
to love. ❑

"Will in the World": How did
Shakespeare become Shakespeare?

