TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (Shakespeare Happy Hours)***

 

By Louise

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfaCDK9Py0I&t=10s

Available until: Indefinitely

This is a really difficult and challenging play – for the actors and production team and for the audience. A lot of the things in the play make it seem like a comedy (two men falling in love with the same girl, girls dressing up as boys, characters getting hold of other characters’ rings) and it is usually included as one of Shakespeare’s comedies. This is probably because, in Shakespeare’s time, a comedy meant a play that had a happy ending, even if it wasn’t funny.

But I don’t really think this play does have a happy ending. It ends with two couples being told they can get married and this would usually be a happy ending, but one of the characters has done some really terrible things and I don’t think it’s realistic for everyone to forget all about it and just be happy they’re getting married.

I think Shakespeare Happy Hours performed the play in the best possible way because they didn’t try to pretend it was a happy ending. The actors have created the characters really carefully so the things that happen in the play are as realistic as possible. It’s still really sad, but I don’t feel as uncomfortable as I would if the characters were all happy.

Proteus is played by Tom Kanji and he does seem really nice at first. He really seems to love Julia (he seems quite obsessed with her which is sweet), but as the play goes on, you find out more about him. He is likeable enough for it to be believable that someone as intelligent as Julia could fall in love with him without realising what he is like, but then you gradually start to have doubts about him and near the end he shows what he is really like.

Montgomery Sutton plays Valentine and he is really lovely. At first he seems maybe a little bit too relaxed about life (which made me think Proteus was the sensible one, which I think is good because it’s like there’s a plot twist when you find out more about him), but as the play goes on, Valentine is nice to everybody and if anyone is in trouble, he wants to help them. I don’t think he really thinks about things very deeply and I think that is really important at the end. The things Valentine wants to happen aren’t realistic, but because Montgomery Sutton has really shown from the start that Valentine is a romantic dreamer, it is believable for him to have another romantic dream at the end and suggest something that is completely unrealistic and wouldn’t make anyone happy.

I thought the two main female characters were really brilliantly performed. Shakespeare doesn’t allow them to object to the plans that are being made for them (and they probably wouldn’t have been allowed to object anyway), but Natasha Magigi (Julia) and Christine Penney (Silvia) do a really amazing job of showing how their characters are really feeling – just like they do right from the start of the play.

Natasha Magigi’s Julia is really intelligent and proactive and doesn’t accept any rubbish from anybody. Her face at the end of the play makes it very clear what she thinks of all the arrangements. From looking at her at that point and thinking about what she has been like throughout the play, I feel Julia will have a lot to say about everything after the curtain goes down.

Silvia is in an even sadder situation. Something terrible has happened and Christine Penney showed brilliantly her sudden vulnerability and fear. She closes in on herself and makes herself look smaller and even though Valentine is a really nice man, I don’t think she’s ready to get married and I am worried about her because she looks too upset to explain how she’s feeling.

The play mostly focuses on these four, but everyone else is really good too. Daniel Kemper plays Thurio, who is engaged to Silvia. It is a clever performance because he seems like a boring character, but he’s actually not boring to watch. Colin Hurley plays the Duke of Milan and he is really interesting because you never quite know what he’s thinking or what his motives are. He doesn’t seem to think very deeply about anything, but something about his eyes makes me wonder if maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing. Dylan Kammerer plays Launce and he actually is funny. His soliloquies are really animated and his dog is really cute.

Shakespeare Happy Hours have really left me with so many questions about what happens next to the characters in Two Gentlemen of Verona and even though I feel sad and shocked, I think this is the right way to perform the play.