Times and Spaces
In 1960 in the newly refurbished Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (soon to be renamed the Royal Shakespeare Theatre) Peter Hall directed a sequence of six Shakespearean comedies suggesting in the program notes that "the early romantic comedy, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, first reveals Shakespeare's flair for mixing romance, realism, lyricism and clowning. This matures in The Merchant of Venice and is at its best in Twelfth Night. But in each of these three plays there is a dark side that almost spoils the fun."
It was set in "that 'ingenious Italy,' rich in storytelling and the land of lyric love." Renzo Mongiardino's sets and Lila de Nobili's Renaissance costumes looked lovely, but overall the production was not judged a success, due in large part to problems with the set, as described by A. Alvarez:
The theatre now has a revolving stage, an apron jutting into the stalls and a new resident director. The opening production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona seemed designed chiefly to show off these assets. The stage twirled so constantly and fast that it seemed at times more like Carousel than Shakespeare; the leading characters each took their turn on the apron stage, trying to break down the fourth wall and buttonhole the audience; and Peter Hall tried nearly every trick in the book to relieve the monotony of very early Shakespeare. But it's heavy going: the plot and development are conventional and the verse monotonous. Yet I'm not at all sure that the play's longueurs are as inevitable as he makes them seem.31
Despite Hall's many "advantages as a Shakespearean director," understanding of the play and "respect for the language as poetry" and the ability "to force a high standard of verse-speaking on his cast," Alvarez claimed that
he has a vice: he is a sucker for a pretty scene; and in Renzo Mongiardino he has a designer all too able to pander to him. The stage was so littered with ivied ruins and bits of decaying gilded interiors that it looked like an opulent, tinted Piranesi. Pretty enough in itself ... yet it contrived to make an immature play seem altogether decadent.32
Subsequent productions have eschewed attempts at Renaissance picturesqueness, locating the play in twentieth-century sets and costumes, seeking modern resonances for the play's jejeune qualities. For Robin Phillips' 1970 production, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was updated to a 1960s lido with beachwear, sunglasses, and onstage swimming pool. Daphne Dare's set consisted of "a ramp and steps from mid-stage left and a small pool downstage right. The forest was created by the dropping of a single batten of ropes from the flies and a dappling of the light."33 The play opened with a recording of "Who is Sylvia? Who is Valentine? Who is Proteus? Who is Julia?" and closed with the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love." B. A. Young argued that the choice of setting was logical: "Courts being out of fashion in the 20th century, Mr Phillips has sent his young people to a Milanese university where their behaviour fits in very suitably."34 Gareth Lloyd Evans believed that "for all the many visual and thematic inconsistencies induced by such a treatment, it seemed to me to have been done in a spirit of affection rather than disdain of this immature play."35
3. Peter Hall's 1960 production with Lucetta (Mavis Edwards, behind) teasing Julia (Frances Cuka) about her letter, Act 1 Scene 2: "The stage was so littered with ivied ruins and bits of decaying gilded interiors that it looked like an opulent, tinted Piranesi ... it contrived to make an immature play seem altogether decadent."
John Barton's 1981 production paired Shakespeare's earliest comedy with his earliest tragedy in a double bill with Titus Andronicus. It was a brave experiment that employed a conscious meta-theatricality in its cross-casting and onstage audience. Both plays were severely cut--850 lines from Titus and 515 from Two Gentlemen. It confused and divided critics. Roger Warren was the most perceptive in his understanding of how the two plays worked together:
Mr Barton's interpretation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona must be considered in relation to his treatment of Titus Andronicus, which preceded it in a double-bill at Stratford.
The acting area was reduced to a very confined space at the front of the stage, surrounded by racks containing costumes, weapons, and props, and by the hobby-horses used by the Goths in Titus and by Silvia, Eglamour and Thurio in their flight to the forest in Two Gentlemen. Patrick Stewart (Titus) announced the play's title and read the opening stage directions. The actors visibly assumed their characterizations before entries and switched them off again once they were out of the acting area; they watched scenes they were not in, and often provided sound effects, such as birdsong for the various forest scenes. Perhaps surprisingly, this artifice did not on the whole rob the events of conviction. Sometimes the actors' presence distracted, as when the actress playing young Lucius had her hair dressed at a central prop table; but more often it led into scenes, as when Saturninus watched the Andronici shooting arrows into his court before storming on to complain "what wrongs are these," or made interesting connections between episodes, as when the watching Julia laughed in sympathetic recognition at Valentine's confusion over the love-letter Silvia had asked him to write: it was as if, like Touchstone, she was thinking that "we that are true lovers run into strange capers."36
4. John Barton's 1981 RSC production was played in a double bill with Titus Andronicus. "The actors visibly assumed their characterizations before entries and switched them off again once they were out of the acting area; they watched scenes they were not in ... [making] interesting connections between episodes, as when the watching Julia laughed in sympathetic recognition at Valentine's confusion over the love-letter Silvia had asked him to write" (Act 2 Scene 1) with Julia Swift (Julia) overlooking Diana Hard-castle (Silvia) and Peter Chelsom (Valentine).
Critics, dismayed by the ruthless treatment of the text in Barton's production, were delighted by David Thacker's far more cavalier approach, which in the event was so successful from its opening in April 1991 that it toured and was revived (with minor cast changes) until the end of 1993. Rex Gibson argues that it was
a brilliant demonstration of Noel Coward's adage: "Never underestimate the power of cheap music." Thacker backs the action of Shakespeare's wonderfully unrealistic romance with a 1930s Cafe de Paris band. The musicians, with centre-parted, sleeked-down hair, immaculate in evening dress, embody the tacky sophistication of love songs with which their platinum blonde singer punctuates each scene. "Blue Moon," "Night and Day," and most tellingly, "Love is the Sweetest Thing" superbly underscore the improbable events of the play.37
Margaret Ingram's account conveys an authentic sense of the audience's response to this infectious production that also explains its popularity:
No-one has ever been more aware than Shakespeare that music is a necessary accompaniment to love; is, indeed, its food, as Orsino proclaims at the beginning of Twelfth Night, begging excess of it that his appetite might be sated. Nothing has changed in 400 years, except that in this production of what was probably Shakespeare's first tentative play about love and betrayal, director David Thacker has had the wit to turn this excess into music so much of our own time that there was hardly a member of the audience who was not responding emotively to The Two Gentlemen of Verona with their own pleasurable memories of the music and song that has been around with never decreasing popularity since the 30s.
[That] they were meant to be in the mood for enjoyment long before the action started was made clear by the beckoning of the ushers to the throng around the bars with the news that the music had begun and we would surely be sorry to miss it. Wonderingly, therefore, we took our seats to the sound of a Cole Porter lyric delightfully sung by Hilary Crome, accompanied by what was surely the Palm Court Orchestra playing at the back of the stage framed in spring blossom but so invitingly empty that it was a wonder no-one sprang on to it and danced. For surely we had been invited to a ball? Perhaps not; but that was the feeling induced and the happiness of the evening was thus successfully radiated before the play began.
This musical accompaniment continued enjoyably throughout every scene change and necessary piece of business while the stage w
as transformed from Verona to Milan and trimly filled with 30s furniture, tennis gear, cabin trunks, sunshine and bright young things in 30s dress. The songs underlined in their own way the love, betrayal and infidelity of human nature and the frailty of youth's protestations and promises. Snatches of Love's Own Sweet Song, Heartache, Love in Bloom and The Glory of Love filled in the message.38
Thacker's was a hard act to follow. Edward Hall's 1998 production, also in the Swan Theatre, offered more "bright young things" in an up-to-the-minute Italian take on the play, which Russell Jackson described as "La Dolce Vita, ca. 1998, rather than Cavalleria Rusticana, 1910." It was a busy production with lots of noise, parties, designer chic, and supernumeraries for doormen, bellboys, and whores, as Jackson went on to elaborate:
Hall found room for plenty of sharp ideas, some of which established milieu deftly: a gangplank and pre-voyage drinks to send Proteus off to Milan; a bar revealed by folding back the louvered shutters on one side of the back wall; traffic noise and oncoming headlights evoked the outskirts of the city where Valentine meets the bandits; a desolate place for the final scene.39
Fiona Buffini's 2004 production toured in repertory with Julius Caesar (not in a double bill though). Michael Billington related the setting to Thacker's earlier production:
Like David Thacker a decade ago, Fiona Buffini has set Two Gents in the 1930s. But where Thacker beguiled us with pop songs by Gershwin and Porter, Buffini uses the period setting to bring out the high style of Milan, which becomes a fashion-plate whirl of slinky women, brilliantined men, hectic parties and hot jazz.40
Patricia Tatspaugh described it as
Set between the wars, with a successful blending of design and direction, Fiona Buffini's Two Gentlemen of Verona for the RSC's small-scale tour depicted an autumnal Verona inhabited by English gentry in decline and Milan as the sophisticated social capital of the jazz age.41
It is perhaps a reflection of its relatively humble place in the Shakespearean canon that The Two Gentlemen of Verona enjoyed the smallest number of performances of any play within the RSC's Complete Works Festival with a single performance on 27 August 2006 at the Courtyard Theatre. Guti Fraga directed a lively, colorful production in English and Portuguese, which combined the talents of Nos do Morro and Gallery 37.
5. Fiona Buffini's 2004 RSC production in the Swan Theatre with Alex Avery (Valentine), Rachel Pickup (Silvia), and Zubin Varla as Turio: Milan became "a fashion-plate whirl of slinky women, brilliantined men, hectic parties and hot jazz."
Twoness and Twosomes
The program notes to Edward Hall's 1998 production argue that "The title of The Two Gentlemen of Verona proclaims the play's thematic interest in 'twoness' and its insistence upon the concept of a sense of proper behavior. An intrinsic duality informs the structural pattern." This is manifested in the two pairs of lovers, two fathers, two comic servants, two rival suitors, even, although we never see Proteus' "little jewel" (4.4.42), two dogs. A production works dramatically by contrasts and distinctions but must nevertheless find a convincing way to achieve the unity promised in the play's conclusion, "One feast, one house, one mutual happiness."
The two gentlemen have the largest but also the most problematic parts (Proteus 20 percent and Valentine 17 percent). In 1960 Derek Godfrey's "handsomely Italianate" Proteus was perhaps too well contrasted with Denholm Elliott's Valentine in a shoulder-length blond wig, "one subtly experienced and the other innocent, solves at a glance any problems raised by their vulnerable friendship. Mr Elliott, indeed, is almost too benevolent, not far from Aguecheek in simplicity [Twelfth Night]. In fact his kindly personality makes the robbers' choice of him as their leader more than usually incredible."42 The trickiest moment comes when, having attempted to rape Silvia, Proteus is nevertheless forgiven and offered "All that was mine in Silvia" (5.4.88) by Valentine. John Russell Brown describes this moment in Hall's production as "spoken so that it was hardly noticed; Proteus' repentance was a sentiment to laugh at."43
Robin Phillips' production (with Ian Richardson as Proteus and Peter Egan as Valentine) attempted to suggest plausible psychological reasons for Proteus' conduct:
As Ian Richardson plays him, it is clear that his shortness compared both to Valentine and Thurio, whose lithe beachboy figure he enviously paws, is a source of lack of confidence. His double-dealing of both men is therefore motivated here not so much by the requirements of a plot borrowed from literary sources but by the spiteful jealousy of a confused adolescent. Thus when this friend and lover with all his hang-ups is paid the ultimate compliment of being offered his best friend's mistress at the close of play, this previously unplayable scene can be said to offer some meaning in the light of current recherche theories of displaced homosexuality.44
Helen Mirren's Julia, "a blonde-wigged tigress,"45 drew considerable critical comment (mostly favorable): "Helen Mirren ... brings the only emotional force to the evening. Her acting shows extraordinary truth and strength."46 There was praise also for minor roles: "Sebastian Shaw's wonderfully funny Scoutmaster Sir Eglamour is as solemn in realisation as it is comic in conception. Clement McCallin has made the Duke laughable by giving a straight performance and a very good one, of a figure who simply doesn't belong in those surroundings."47 Harold Hobson concluded that the production,
By way of beachwear and the Lido ... reaches the heart of Shakespeare's play--the rapture of its youth and the darkness of its treachery--and finds it beating fresh and strong. It treats with masterly nonchalance the more absurd parts of the story, but where the verse is great, it is greatly spoken. Whether grave or playful, Mr Phillips' touch is unfaltering, to the play's essence totally loyal.48
John Barton's production had its own version of "twoness" playing in a double bill with Titus Andronicus. Patrick Stewart (Lance in the 1970 Two Gents, see below) played Titus and Sheila Hancock, Tamora. As the leads in the earlier play, it was they who, despite taking minor roles in Two Gents, claimed most critical attention. Stewart played Sir Eglamour and Sheila Hancock the leader of the Outlaws:
After the interval, she [Hancock] bounded cheerfully forward to announce Two Gentlemen. The sheer contrast with Titus was bound to emphasize its humorous potential, but in addition the scenes involving Eglamour and the Outlaws were able to make humorous allusions to the treatment of Titus earlier on. The Outlaws were without question the funniest I have ever seen, appearing in Lincoln green hoods among the prop trees from the Titus forest accompanied by twittering birdsong. There were nine of them and the lines were redistributed so that the actor of Aaron [Hugh Quarshie] could call abduction and murder "petty crimes," and so that Sheila Hancock could give an astonishing performance as their leader: it was she who had stabbed a gentleman "in my mood"; she immediately fell for Valentine, praising him as "a linguist!" in tones of rapt admiration, and later telling Silvia with evident disappointment that Valentine would "not use a woman lawlessly." She was also armed with a blunderbuss which suddenly went off, provoking an explosion of squawking from a host of "offstage" birds. The actors themselves could hardly keep straight faces after this, entirely pardonably: it was an irresistible climax to a marvellously funny scene, perfectly appropriate to Shakespeare's burlesque of Robin Hood outlaws. The treatment of Sir Eglamour was even more appropriate. Patrick Stewart's armour and gentlemanly manner recalled his Titus; with his lance, fluttering pennant, and hobby-horse he was the perfect image of an ageing knight errant, a White Knight or Don Quixote; in the forest he took on all the Outlaws at once, and since there were so many of them the textual problem of Silvia's chivalrous escort taking to his heels ceased to exist.49
6. Robin Phillips' 1970 RSC production with Helen Mirren as Julia (here in disguise as the page, Sebastian) and Ian Richardson as Proteus: Mirren was described as "a blonde-wigged tigress" whose "acting shows extraordinary truth and strength" while Richardson's Proteus was motivated by "the spiteful jealousy of a confused adolescent."
Stanley Wells found the production "modest, charming,
and sensitive to the play's weaknesses":
The gentlemen, for once, seem really young, so are more easily forgiven. Peter Land plays an initially soppy Proteus, but finds a way to convey shame and bewilderment at the unexpected shift in his emotions. Peter Chelsom's engaging Valentine, full of boyish charm and innocence, youthfully pleased with himself, has the right mixture of comedy and romance, and develops into the most interesting character. The moment of his banishment, when he kneels to John Franklin-Robbins's entertaining, strongly characterized Emperor, introduces a new dimension of seriousness; in the final scene, the genuineness of his concern both for Silvia and Proteus carries us surprisingly well through the notoriously difficult denouement.50
Thacker's production also lent a comprehensible social context to the young men's behavior in the 1930s "salon society":
There is a logic to this idiom which emerges clearly on through the horseplay of the two suitors. They are public school types whose relationship, if not overtly sexual, has a competitive closeness. Schoolboy rough-and-tumble lingers on the brink of adult eroticism; a boy's own complicity is almost confusable with declarations of love.51
Benedict Nightingale suggests why updated versions of the play should have worked so well:
When lovers appear in doublet and hose, we expect them to behave in conventional romantic ways. Transpose them to places we can more easily associate with youthful skittishness and folly, and they can do things offensive to earnest scholars and yet seem perfectly plausible. Who knows, maybe Shakespeare meant to make romance look silly. Maybe to take liberties with this play is to be truly faithful to it. After all, every era is familiar with Proteus, the young blood who swears eternal love to one woman, then falls for his chum Valentine's girl, and proceeds to behave outrageously to everybody. At Stratford, Barry Lynch is certainly the kind of intense, secret boy who, with a little sophistry, can convince himself that his feelings are morally paramount. The last scene, with its hurried reconciliations, admittedly poses special difficulties for him, since Proteus must switch from a rapist to a penitent, in what good taste should prevent me calling a flash. Yet among men of a certain age is that really so unlikely? By then the zest and humour of Thacker's production have anyway swept away most objections.52