Entertainment

Review: The Bard as Bedtime Story in ‘Table Top Shakespeare’

NEW YORK — By the end of the evening Tuesday, about four hours in, the worn-looking table onstage at NYU Skirball was lined with sundries arranged two by two — self-tanning lotion alongside a tall bottle of beer, sunscreen paired with olive oil, a tin of chopped tomatoes next to antiseptic cream. Also a cheery blue can of Heinz Beanz (these are British groceries; they get to spell it that way) and its significant other: a small tube of toothpaste, partially used.

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Laura Collins-Hughes
, New York Times

NEW YORK — By the end of the evening Tuesday, about four hours in, the worn-looking table onstage at NYU Skirball was lined with sundries arranged two by two — self-tanning lotion alongside a tall bottle of beer, sunscreen paired with olive oil, a tin of chopped tomatoes next to antiseptic cream. Also a cheery blue can of Heinz Beanz (these are British groceries; they get to spell it that way) and its significant other: a small tube of toothpaste, partially used.

To the uninitiated, this might read as clutter, surely not as a wedding tableau. But to the audience of “As You Like It,” the fourth and final play in the opening-night marathon of miniatures by the British company Forced Entertainment, these quotidian objects were unambiguously the lovers in the play: Rosalind and Orlando, Celia and Oliver, Silvius and Phoebe, Touchstone and Audrey.

Disbelief falls away immediately in “Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare,” a series that by Sunday night will have presented condensed versions of 36 Shakespeare plays. This is not Shakespeare by the book, though. Directed by Tim Etchells, and with a flock of authors (Robin Arthur, Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor and Etchells), this is Shakespeare retold, each drama narrated by a single performer who enacts it with items you might grab from the cupboard, and that they grab from shelves at the sides of the stage.

There is something of the nursery in the show’s insistence on unfettered imagination, and something of the bedtime story in the way the best of these tales unfold. They’re not soporific but soothingly mesmeric, even the tragic ones. They’re at close range, too, with the audience seated onstage.

“'Antony and Cleopatra,'” Naden said, taking her seat at the table for the first play of the night. “It starts in the ancient city of Alexandria, in Egypt.” And in a calm tone, in colloquial language, she commenced a psychologically insightful, captivatingly clear version of a story that mixes warfare with romance as it hopscotches around the Mediterranean.

Attended by handmaidens who were brightly colored spools of thread, Cleopatra was a filigreed creamer, her Antony a stoppered cruet — and it was somehow no less moving when they died at the end.

“The Merchant of Venice,” up next and performed by Nicki Hobday, was the program’s weak spot, but not because it’s a controversial play. It came across as curiously flat, willing to go in for frolic yet missing the vital element of sympathy. It didn’t seem much interested in understanding Shylock, who was represented by an empty picture frame.

“Richard II” was an astonishment, though — partly because of O’Connor’s masterly ability to hold a room spellbound, and partly because of the script. Drawing more directly than the others on the beauty of Shakespeare’s language, it also conveyed in its narration a depth of feeling for the characters. The greedy, vindictive Richard was an imposing bottle of rosewater; his uncle John of Gaunt a formidable candlestick. O’Connor made us ache for them both, and others besides.

Even given such skill, a whole marathon can be a lot — probably more so this weekend, when there are two five-show programs each day. Each play will get just a single performance at the Skirball. Sampling at least two is a good plan, though, in case one doesn’t measure up.

Tuesday night finished with Arthur as the charmingly shambling performer of “As You Like It.” If it went on a bit too long, it also brought unaccustomed laughs, as when the melancholy Jaques’ “All the world’s a stage” speech was dispatched with a single line.

And the wrestling match, where a beer bottle squared off against a tin of Brasso? For the first time ever, I loved that scene.

Additional Information:

“Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare”

Runs through Sept. 16 at NYU Skirball, Manhattan; 212-998-4941, nyuskirball.org. Running time: 40 to 50 minutes per play

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