Concurrently with my 2022 review of Pony World’s “Not/Our Town,” I announced that in 2023 I was taking a year-long personal leave of absence from engaging with the writings of William Shakespeare, as well as any adaptations or reimaginings. Though an eventual need for work outweighed the piety of my quest, I spent 10 months steeped in the irony of trying to ignore Shakespeare while thinking about him more intentionally than I ever had before.
Conveniently, the new year kicked itself off with a Sound-wide celebration of Will! Seattle Shakespeare brought forward a small-cast “Comedy of Errors,” followed by a raucous, rowdy “Henry V Bar(d).” Meanwhile in Marysville, Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts ran “Shakespeare’s R&J,” and Seattle Rep promises the highly anticipated “Fat Ham” later this season. I had the opportunity to see Taproot Theatre’s “The Book of Will” one Thursday, followed the next evening by ArtsWest’s “Born with Teeth” — back-to-back examinations of Shakespeare’s life and legacy on opposite sides of town.
Finding the folio
In Lauren Gunderson’s “The Book of Will,” it’s up to the aged contemporaries of the late Shakespeare to compile an accurate folio of his remaining works — a task that is expensive and controversial and tests the fortitude of the players as Shakespeare’s scattered writings leave his legacy in limbo.
Throughout the show, the question of exactly who Shakespeare’s legacy belongs to transitions from one of burdensome grief to flaming hot ammunition: Is it a rival compiler and his strange additions to the work? Is it the women of this world, whose love for the theater resulted in breakthrough progress on finding the Bard’s words? Surely it’s not Shakespeare’s remaining family, who only become relevant in the second act.
It’s interesting to me how Taproot has platformed on its mainstage two Gunderson plays back to back; that said, Gunderson’s reputation of offering feminist interpretations of classics seems to be in line with the theater’s goal of including newer, younger audiences in the mix with its older, longtime patrons. Disappointingly, it takes some time for women in the play to talk about anything besides a man; even if I excluded Shakespeare from this metric, the business of the women remains that of their male family members.
When it comes to the men — despite an impressive display of range by Nolan Palmer as Burbage among others and hilarious physicality by Nik Doner’s Poet Laureate — they resorted so often to yelling that the volume lost heat. A show that relies heavily on the ridicule of a blind person, creates a recurring joke from a man showing affection for his friends and offers little room for women’s emotional arcs begs the question of how else a story of a love so strong for the theater that it creates life purpose could be told — because there are surely countless other ways.
Despite the sandpaper effect on my soul of men yelling at each other for over two hours, “The Book of Will”’s theme of opening Shakespeare’s legacy to all who love his work still rings true. Even when grief and expenses pile up, the main characters focus on their nostalgia to bring honor to their colleague’s name for the rest of time, at last concluding, “We are Will.”
Revealing the artist
But who was Will, really? A brief mention of Christopher “Kit” Marlowe in “The Book of Will” becomes the centerpiece of the fast-paced, fiery hot “Born with Teeth,” produced by ArtsWest. A two-hander between Michael Monicatti’s Marlowe and Ricky Spaulding’s Shakespeare brings to light the strife of survival in heavily censored, highly suspicious Elizabethan England. Playwright Liz Duffy Adams’s application of Shakespeare’s infamous innuendo fits seamlessly into the heightened language consistent with the world of the story. The searing sexual tension between the two writers comes alight as audiences question who holds power over the other — or if the game is just in both their heads.
The incredible focus and precision required of its actors to take on such legendary and nuanced roles absolutely must be commended. Monicatti’s offerings to Marlowe of sharpness, poise and silver-tongued guile quickly paint a picture of a fiendish, passionate poet even to the contextually uninitiated viewer. Spaulding creates a Shakespeare who is subtle, perceptive and calculated, ensuring he has the audience’s trust no matter how the lacquer on his image peels.
The runway-style diagonal thrust stage that “Born with Teeth” is set on evokes elements of ball and vogue — matching the need to make decisive, thrilling moves to survive when the competition is one on one. Lighting in museum-like overhead fluorescents and stage-floor undertones, designed by Chih-Hung Shao, blushes with the characters’ desire and cools with their distrust. Marlowe lives a life of high risk and reward between great exploits and a trail of arrests, while Shakespeare claims to keep his head down for the sake of his family and personal longevity, until the pull to his fellow man becomes unbearable. Yet, it’s the fear of discovery — of Kit’s atheism, of Will’s family’s Catholicism, of either of their treason against the monarchy — that painfully pulls the two apart and sets them on paths away from each other.
Insofar as questioning Shakespeare’s legacy goes, “Born with Teeth” challenges audiences to ask how the popular narratives of the Bard’s life may have been sanitized post mortem.
The Bard in my back pocket
When I announced my “Shakeless in Seattle” challenge, I asked myself, “What new words could I use to shape my theatrical art when I remove one of theater’s greatest definers from my practice?” It took me a whole year of reflection to realize that I cannot lose William Shakespeare, but I can stop being defined by a legacy that defines me out. Plays like “The Book of Will” remind me that even the strongest reimaginings of a history, a tragedy or a comedy are just that — reimaginings with little verifiable accuracy to the original word. “Born with Teeth” shows me, a queer writer who walks the line of outspoken visibility and dampening secrecy, that I have always existed and even a sanitized, censored literary canon can have room for me on principle. Seeing as I still live for the theater and intend to die for it no day soon, I’m the one in control of my legacy.
W. Barnett Marcus is an actor living in Seattle.
Read more of the Feb. 14–20, 2024 issue.