Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Kathryn Samson & Lindsay Ashworth

‘A chiller, a thriller, as up to the minute as tomorrow’s headlines!’ This quote, taken from a review of West Side Story in the New York Mirror, 1958, still rings true today. A plot that deals with teenage love, racial hatred and gang warfare would not be out of place in an average Martin Scorcese film. However, it is no secret that the basic concept for this story is now nearly five hundred years old! West Side Story is just one show from a whole genre of Broadway musicals that take their inspiration from the works of William Shakespeare.

It was Broadway legend, Jerome Robbins, who conceived the idea of setting Romeo and Juliet to music within the context of New York City gangs. ‘Fair Verona’ morphs into the urban slums of New York, and the Montagues and Capulets find their equivalents in the juvenile gangs of local whites and immigrant Puerto Ricans, battling to the death over the streets they claim as their territory. The famous balcony scene of Shakespeare’s tragedy is recreated as Tony and Maria meet on an ugly fire escape of a New York tenement. West Side Story was totally innovative in style, music and choreography but was by no means the first show to borrow from the Bard.

Back in 1938, George Abbot lifted the characters and plot of Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors and approached the famous musical/lyrical duo, Rogers and Hart, to produce a score. The result: The Boys from Syracuse.

Only one authentic line from the original play made its way into the musical: ‘The venom of clamours of a jealous woman poisons more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth.’ This was duly acknowledged as such when one of the characters popped his head around from the wings and announced, ‘Shakespeare!’

The Boys from Syracuse enjoyed a successful run both on Broadway and in London’s West End, the London cast featuring such greats as Bob Monkhouse and Ronnie Corbett! However, when it comes to lasting success and enduring appeal, it was to prove no match for the next show to take its inspiration from the small bearded man from Stratford.

The idea for Kiss Me Kate was planted in the mind of producer Saint Subber while working as a stagehand on a production of The Taming Of The Shrew. The married stars of the show, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, had an offstage relationship almost as tempestuous as the one they had onstage while portraying Shakespeare’s famous quarrelling couple. Veteran comedy writers Samuel and Bella Spewack, who had been separated for some time, reunited to write the libretto. The story is a play within a play that follows the lives of egotistical actor-producer Fred Graham and his temperamental co-star and ex-wife Lili Vanessi in a production of, yes you’ve guessed it, Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew. Life imitated art when, just like Fred and Lili, the Spewacks managed to resolve their differences and stayed together permanently after the production was staged.

If Shakespeare would have taken offence at the disrespectful use of his work in Kiss Me Kate, a production to be conceived in the early ’80s would have him turning in his grave! Return to the Forbidden Planet is based on the hit 1956 science fiction film, Forbidden Planet, which itself is based loosely on Shakespeare’s The Tempest (why does everything to do with Shakespeare have to be so confusing?). Around this Bob Carlton manages to imaginatively blend almost all of the best rock ’n’ roll hits from the ’50s and ’60s with shamelessly bastardised lines from almost every Shakespeare play ever written. Classic examples include: ‘two bleeps or not two bleeps, that is the question’ and ‘But soft, what light from yonder airlock breaks!’ Strange as the concept may seem, it worked brilliantly. Return to the Forbidden Planet won the 1990 Olivier award for best musical and acquired a cult following.

So, in the words of Mr. Cole Porter, if you want a show with universal themes and timeless appeal, ‘Brush up your Shakespeare and you’ll all kow-pow!’