Arts 16 Life
ON STAGE IN CANADA
from page 47
It's no coincidence that the name of
Stephen Sondheim appears on the
playbills of both the Stratford and
Shaw festivals this year, as lyricist of
Gypsy at the Shaw and composer/
lyricist of Into the Woods at Stratford.
"He's really the inheritor of the tra-
dition of the American musical," said
Jackie
Maxwell,
Shaw
Festival
artistic
director.
The Shaw
Festival's
artistic
director has
final say in
choosing
plays, direc-
Composer Stephen
tors and
Sondheim has musicals casts for
at both the Stra t ford
each season.
and Shaw festivals.
In addition,
Maxwell
herself is directing this year's produc-
tion of Gypsy.
The show has compelling music and
lyrics, backing up an extraordinarily
strong book, she said. "Watching it,
it's literally one amazing song after
another."
Sondheim almost lost out on writ-
ing for Gypsy. Back in the late 1950s,
when planning began for the show,
Sondheim was at the start of his
career, Maxwell said.
"He'd gotten his big break as lyricist
in West Side Story, and he was asked to
both compose and write lyrics for
Gypsy," she said. "But Ethel Merman
[who originated the key role of Mama
Rose] was nervous. She said he was
too untried.
"Sondheim was insulted; he was
going to quit, but Oscar
Hammerstein, his mentor, told him it
was the chance of a lifetime."
The lyrics have the uniquely clever
touch Sondheim perfected in his later
works, Maxwell said. "In the song
`You Gotta Have a Gimmick,' who
else would have the strippers sing,
`You can sacrifice your sacro; working
in the back row.'
"I do believe Sondheim had a very
good working relationship with
Styne," Maxwell said. "Research shows
he pushed Styne to a new level."
And, just as in the partnership
between Sondheim and Leonard
Bernstein in West Side Story, there's
always some question as to whether
Sondheim actually wrote some of
Gypsy's music after all.
Shaking Up Shakespeare
The actors who romp through
Stratford's As You Like It wear the
miniskirts and peasant blouses of
1968 rather than the doublets
and hose of 1599, when
Shakespeare's comedy had its
premiere.
The story centers on two
young women, Rosalind and
Cecelia, who leave aristocratic
materialism, insincerity and
competition and escape to the
Clockwise:
Forest of Arden. They are fol-
Jewish actors
lowed by an assortment of
Sam7-22), Rosen,
friends and lovers, and all sorts
Ryan Stillwate• and
of complications ensue.
Gabriel Wolinsky all
"As You Like It is a play that
make their debuts
explores many kinds of love from
at Stratford
the viewpoint of the young,"
this year.
said director Antoni Cimolino.
"In the spirit of youthful rebel-
couples falling into
lion, the characters drop out of
the envious and sophisticated world of each other's arms. Among them is the
country wench Audrey, played by
the court in favor of the simplicity of
Toronto-born actress Laura Condllin.
the country." In the Stratford produc-
"It's such a fabulous play, and we have
tion, the action takes place in the late
these
crazy '60s wigs and costumes,"
1960s, another era in which young
said
Condllin,
a Toronto native who
people tuned in, turned on and
studied at the University of Windsor.
dropped out.
The music of Barenaked Ladies —
Like all of Shakespeare's comedies,
part pre-recorded and part live — real-
As YouLike It ends with several happy
ON STAGE IN CANADA on page 53
Shakespeare On The Couch
Lively biography analyzes the playwright's works in their historical and _psychological context.
DIANA LIEBERMAN
Special to the Jewish News
ir
tom the moment William Shakespeare died
on April 23, 1616, theories and legends
about his life began to accumulate.
The playwright and poet was a private man who
left little aside from his literary creations to reveal
his feelings or opinions. His roots were far from
the aristocracy and the literary establishment of his
day, and he took care to remain aloof from reli-
gious and political turmoil. He left no letters or
diaries, no revealing first drafts of his works. Even
his romantic liaisons were shrouded in mystery.
"Any biography of Shakespeare that doesn't just
rehashthe same 'facts that are known must of
necessity be conjecture," said Stephen Greenblatt,
author of Will in the World:: How Shakespeare
Became Shakespeare (W. W Norton; 526.95).
In this fast-moving book — a finalist for.the
National Book Award — Greenblatt combines the
little that is known about Shakespeare with events
and influences that could have happened based on
the author's knowledge of Elizabethan society.
"You could say I speculated," the author said,
"but only if there was something in the biographi-
,,
cal traces that allowed me to speculate.
Greenblatt, who is University Professor of the
Humanities at Harvard University, has written
widely on Renaissance England as well as
Shakespeare and his contemporaries. His approach
to literary biography is known as "historicism" —
understanding concepts, beliefs and truths in rela-
Stephen
Greenblatt:
`You could
say I
speculated"
tion to the entire cultures of the historical periods
surrounding them.
Shakespeare's father was a closet Catholic in a
time when Catholics feared for their lives; the play-
wright mocked Protestantism in the character of
Malvolio in Twelfth Night and debated competing
philosophies of life after death in Hamlet.
Shakespeare's plays are full of lovemaking in the
forest and quickly arranged marriages; the play-
wright himself made a hasty marriage and became
a father six months later. Shakespeare was belittled
by a certain Robert Greene, the wild-living head of
London's literary circle; with a few modifications,
Greene became Falstaff.
From Monty Python To The Bard
A native of Newton, Mass., Greenblatt was an
undergraduate at Yale University, attended
London's Cambridge University on a Fulbright
Scholarship and returned to Yale for his Ph.D.
Although his father was a lawyer, Greenblatt said,
that was "back in the days when you didn't need an
undergraduate degree to become a lawyer.
"My brother and I were the first in the family to
SHAKESPEARE on page 53