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Taming Shakespeare By Michael Handelzalts Every time I go to Stratford, home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, I am amused anew by the fact that the road there passes by a village called Broadway. There is a kind of contradiction between the town that operates around the life and works of the greatest playwright the world has ever known, a sterling symbol of culture, and the name of the street in New York, which is the symbol of commercial theater. Of course for Shakespeare himself, artistic and commercial success coincided and nowadays, too, such dichotomies can be rather deceptive. The Royal Shakespeare Company does put on the plays that the genius wrote (and other plays as well, by his contemporaries and ours) but it does not despise commercial theater: The musical "Les Miserables" was born on its stage, though in cooperation with Cameron Mackintosh. That said, Broadway has indeed become more and more commercial, and if a Shakespeare play is put on there it is most likely an import from England; that said, a bit north of New York, in Canada, it is possible to see classical repertory theater, done properly, without any scrimping on resources and with considerable commercial success. Advertisement This happens in the context of two festivals, both centered on playwrights who wrote in English: the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which concentrates on works by Irishman George Bernard Shaw, and the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford. Yes, there is a Stratford in Canada, situated near the Avon River. The name "Festival" might mislead some, because it does not apply here to a collection of theatrical events, usually imported for a short period, but rather to two large theater companies that perform seven months out of the year (during the winter it is simply impossible to get to these places, because of the snow) in a repertory format. In the course of four days, I had the opportunity to see four plays at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, and three plays at the Shaw Festival, in Niagara-on-the-Lake. I saw theater that was excellent by any standard and in every dimension: the level of the acting, the level of the pronunciation (with clean and comprehensible diction), the impetus of the direction and the extent of the production. It is true that the plays that I saw at both companies were not remarkable for experimental daring or new interpretation. On the contrary: They stood out as theater as it ought to be. The founders and directors of the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Canada, also left their mark on Israel's national theater, Habimah. The founder of the festival, Tyrone Guthrie, directed "The Merchant of Venice" and "Oedipus" at Habimah, even before he created the flagship theater for the Canadians. David William, who managed the Shakespeare Festival, managed Habimah for a very short time in the 1970s, after the completion of the previous renovation of the building. During that period John Hirsch, also one of the directors of the Stratford Festival, directed "The Seagull" in Tel Aviv. Des McAnuff is currently the artistic director of the Shakespeare Festival. The highlight of the season is in fact a play by George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra," with 79-year-old Christopher Plummer in the role of Julius Caesar, playing opposite the nearly novice actress Nikki M. James as Cleopatra. The production is a stunning spectacle staged in a very large hall, which is a combination of an Elizabethan-style stage that thrusts out into the audience and the Greek amphitheater. The stage is exposed and the actors take their places from among the audience and the acoustics are wonderful (none of the actors uses a microphone and all of them are heard well). To exemplify the repertory work, it need only be said that in the same hall "Romeo and Juliet" is performed in the afternoon and "Caesar and Cleopatra" in the evening - both are directed by McAnuff. Not only does this entail a large and complicated change of scenery, but Nikki M. James plays Juliet in the afternoon and Cleopatra in the evening. The next day, "Hamlet," directed by Adrian Noble, is put on in a production of large dimensions; it is set at the start of the 20th century, with Hamlet (Ben Carlson) as a mature individual and Ophelia (Adrienne Gould) as a not-naive girl, who is mesmerizing in her mad scene. Carlson and Gould also act in "The Taming of the Shrew," on the same stage in the evening: He plays Tranio and she plays Bianca. True, it is very amusing to see Petruchio (Evan Buliung) harass Katherina (Irene Poole), and it is true that this production is especially beautiful both in its music and in its rich appearance, and it is true that this is one of the few productions to use the Prologue, which makes "The Taming of the Shrew" a play-within-a-play. This said, when Katherina appears at the end of play and delivers an emotional speech in which she admonishes the audience that "Such duty as the subject owes the prince / Even such a woman oweth her husband," it is hard not to feel uncomfortable. Yes, it's true that this is how things were in Shakespeare's time (and also for quite a long a long time afterwards), but it hurts so much to see the vivacious woman of the beginning of the play become the submissive wife of a brutal, if very charming, man at its end. However, if I was disturbed by this play, I was accorded adequate compensation the following day, at the Shaw Festival, at the performance of George Bernard Shaw's 100-year-old play, "Mrs. Warren's Profession." This is perhaps the only play about which it is possible to say wholeheartedly, in contemporary language, and with all due propriety, that it is "a bitch of a play." The heroine, Vivie Warren, is a young, independent woman: She has completed a degree in mathematics at university and is determined to support herself. She does not intend to wait for a husband who will support her - until she discovers that her mother, who from afar in her home in Brussels had seen to an excellent education for her daughter, had earned her living in the oldest profession in the world (Mrs. Warren's profession). Vivie is prepared to come to terms with her mother having sold her body for money, when the older woman explains to her that she had been the victim of the circumstances of her life and that this was her way of getting ahead in life. However, their reconciliation is short-lived: The daughter discovers that her mother who had earned her living from prostitution is now running a chain of brothels. Now the mother is no longer a woman struggling to survive as best she can in a cruel world, but rather a capitalist who is making money from prostitution. Even worse, the daughter discovers that her own education had been purchased with the mother's filthy earnings. Wittily and clearly, Shaw presents a confrontation between swinish capitalism and naive socialism, with the conflict being between a mother and a daughter. He is not a simplistic preacher: He shows that any ideology forces its disciple to pay a price. The mother earns a living by running brothels and refuses to be ashamed of this; however, she has educated her daughter to live a better life, which she did not have herself, and now the daughter is distancing herself from her. And despite the strong and complex relationship between mother and daughter, neither is prepared to give up her view and her life, even at the cost of their relationship. Shaw Festival Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell directed the play. The two actresses are Mary Haney (in her 23rd year in this theater) as Mrs. Warren and Moya O'Connell as her daughter. The stage confrontation between them shoots off sparks; neither is prepared to concede one iota - neither as characters nor as performers. And all of a sudden, a well-made, entirely realistic play, which depicts by ordinary theatrical means problems that are still relevant today and make for the most fascinating and exciting theater. And the audience, which is supposedly more enlightened than the audience of 100 years ago, is still attentive and grappling with this play, which Shaw wrote in order to cause the audience profound discomfort while entertaining it. And in this, "Mrs. Warren's Profession" is wonderfully successful. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Seeds of the future An Israeli biofuel project using Africa's jatropha plant may end Mideast oil power. PFLP threat A Palestinian militant group vows to kill MK Lieberman to avenge Acre riots.

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