Polishing Shakespeare
★★☆☆☆ To speak and purpose not
Assembly Rooms (Venue 20): Thurs 1 – Sun 25 Aug 2024
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Twilight Theatre Company’s Polishing Shakespeare dramatizes imagined meetings between a dotcom billionaire, the artistic director of an “esteemed American theatre company,” and the playwright they are attempting to commission to translate Shakespeare’s works into modern English.
A thinly veiled response to the Play on! Project announced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015, Polishing Shakespeare comments on the idea of the project itself, the concept of selling out, and the nature of arts funding in the United States. Unfortunately, it does none of these with particular polish.
Polishing Shakespeare Pic: Carol Rosegg.
The trio of billionaire Grant (Brian Dykstra, also the show’s writer), AD Ms. Branch (Kate Levy), and playwright Janet (Kate Siahaan-Rigg) parrot rapid-fire patter at each other, with inflection as blank as the verse the script works to ape.
Peppered with rhyming couplets adds to the soporific atmosphere of Shakespeare-meets-Dr-Seuss; doing neither justice. One of this production’s primary goals seems to be seeing how many words it can fit into its sixty-minute runtime, mistaking verboseness and wordplay for actually saying something.
signifying nothing
While this could itself be a commentary on Shakespeare, whose plays are continually cut for time, that seems beyond the subtlety of this production. When Grant takes aim at Henry VIII to describe a play where “nobody knows what’s being said or who this play’s about,” Polishing reflects itself.
It is an attempt at social commentary without teeth, characters that neither truly satirize nor exemplify, a narrative without arc. In short: sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Running time: One hour (no interval)
Assembly Rooms (Front Room), 54 George Street EH2 2LR (Venue 20)
Thursday 1 – Sunday 25 August 2024
Daily (not 7, 19): 3.30pm
Details and tickets at: Book here
Website: www.twilighttheatrecompany.org
Facebook: @twilighttheatreco
Instagram: @twilighttheatreco
ENDS
Thoroughly enjoyed this; beautifully written, making interesting and valid points, and flawlessly executed..11/10!!!