All mirth and no matter!

When does a classic stopping being a classic?

Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to see a delightful production of a Much Ado About Nothing at the Pop-Up Globe theatre in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. I’m pretty conservative in my tastes when it comes to Shakespeare, and gravitate (perhaps relate) more to English accents of the Brannagh/Thompson ilk than American and New Zealand accents – which Beatrice and Benedick had. But theirs and their cast-mates performances absolutely won me over, and I enjoyed the show immensely.

I was at one point, however, struck by a deeply unsettling feeling, and not for the first time recently. The previous instance had been during a performance by Opera Australia of the famous Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci double bill. You’ll be posting loads of engaging content, so be sure to keep your blog organized with Categories that also allow visitors to explore more of what interests them.

This was a tremendous production with one of the cleverest interpretations, and some of the best acting I’ve ever seen on an opera stage. Oh yeah, the singing was good too. Despite the magnificence of the performances, the root of my discomfort was the depiction of violence against the female characters.

I should qualify this further. The issue is certainly not that I’m too sensitive to witness violence generally (or specifically against women) on stage, film, or television. I love watching buildings, and cars, and people getting blown up and eaten by sharks and all that stuff… probably more than most. The violence presented in these stage productions was far less graphic than that shown routinely on prime time television.

However, the context of the characters within these stories, the power imbalances, the social environment, and the expectation of sympathy for the perpetrators of these violent acts make this imagery vastly more confronting for a modern audience.

In all three stories the male characters, motivated by trickery, jealousy, or vice carryout acts of public humiliation, violence, and even murder against the women they’re supposed to love. And in all three, even the utterly lighthearted Shakespeare, the audience is expected to forgive and forget, or at least empathise with these acts of violence. He murdered her, but you know.. she did cheat on him!

In recent years the issue of violence against women has increasingly been brought into the mainstream and is now, as it should be, firmly on the political agenda as a scourge that needs to be tackled, and overcome. Five years ago I wouldn’t have, and didn’t recognise that these types of depictions were controversial – in the world of theatre, they’re so common as to be virtually inescapable.

No doubt, the argument can be made that I’m ignoring “context”. That I’m forgetting the time and place in which these works were conceived. Absolutely – you’ve got to suspend disbelief! But, I reflected on that and tried to reconcile it with the way watching it made me feel, and still felt it wasn’t really o.k.

I’m not advocating for a boycott, a rewrite, or anything really. I’d be super pissed-off if I never got to hear live the Preludio or Intermezzo from Cav, or hear Vesti La Giubba, or watch Beatrice and Benedick go at one another. But I am curious to know if anything has changed for you, in recent times, when watching theatre, movies, television? And if so, does this mean anything for the future or these “great” works of art?

Or, is it simply much ado about nothing?

Hope you have a brilliant weekend ahead,

Jake