'Shakespeare's Will' cheapens the life of the great playwright

By Aaren Pastor     4/19/12 7:00pm

With a running time of just under 70  minutes, at least this play ends far sooner than a monotonous history spilled from "Bill's" pen. This one-woman, one-act show creatively imagines the life and times of the enigmatic Anne Hathaway, played by Rice Theater Director and lecturer Christina Keefe. Hathaway was the Bard's wife of 34 years who dwelled in anonymity (and has thus been lost in obscurity) in Stratford while her husband became history's greatest playwright in London.

There is an enormous amount of pressure in just tackling William Shakespeare, the man, much less engaging in conjecture about his personal life or that of his wife. There is a standard to be met if one wishes to play about with the granddaddy of English literature, of theater, of the very collective cultural mind. This play simply does not come close to approaching or even honoring ?that standard.

First, the reference to Shakespeare as Bill is an incredibly irksome and crude attempt to change this monolithic man into a homely, just-anotherEnglish-lad-married-to-an-older-woman type of guy. The whole point is that this woman is married to a great man, so the actress should not try to be nonchalant about her marriage. The characterization of Bill is as an awkward yet charming teenager obsessed with the players at the fair.

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    The script is often redundant, which is slightly forgivable in that this is a one-person monologue stretched out for over an hour, but sloppy writing is sloppy writing. At times (nearly every time for me, but perhaps it was just a surly Sunday), the jokes, attempting to be wink-wink bawdy, made me cringe in distaste.

However, Keefe did quite a job of carrying the play. With the aid of impeccable and nuanced lighting, she seamlessly transitioned between the stages of Anne's life: maid at the fair, wife to a distant husband, mother to children, grieving mother and widow. She commands the makeshift black box stage and struggles valiantly to imbue the specter of Anne with a vibrancy and ahead-of-her-time feminism that the script seems to be aiming for in its extensive references to "their contract." The audience is meant to see Anne as a protofeminist: a sexually confident, independent woman who enters into marriage with Shakespeare out of love, yes, but also out of a shared acknowledgement for each partner to be allowed to live his or her own life. She then becomes the strong mother at home, raising her children yet still not getting smothered by her life in the country. Indeed, she must have been something for Shakespeare to actually have retired back to her in the last years of his life. There is just a certain credibility lacking in the play's script that no amount of acting could fix.

The lack of a British accent is not in itself a bad thing. It is when Keefe lapses into a stridently American tone - such as when she mimics Anne's father's voice - that one is jarred by the dissonance between the material and the delivery. The set, like the tech, is flawless. A long scroll of paper with just the faintest embossment of text hangs to form one backdrop. One wooden desk, one planked bench, a chair just outside of the room, and three small toys representative of their children - a chick for Judith, her "chick," a boat for Hamnet who was always building them and a baby doll for Susanne, the eldest who produced the only grandchildren - constitute the props and set. The props are sparse, yet appropriate for this scene of mourning ?and reflection.

"Shakespeare's Will" does an entertaining job of integrating historical facts and events into its script, as well as political commentary on gender equity and marriage contracts in Tudor England, without getting preachy. The implication is that a Tudor social history nerd will need to be sitting in the audience elaborating and verifying or explaining the veiled allusions and historical asides. The play deserves credit for its attempt at resuscitating Hathaway, in spite of its sometimes tasteless comments and redundancies. Keefe appears a talented actress with the right amount of gravitas and wonderful presence to play a widow. However, the overall affect of the play falls flat.

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