A Shakespearean frolic
Something strange has been happening in Palmerston North’s Esplanade. Carly Thomas investigated and discovered some of the cast of this year’s Summer Shakespeare in a pond.
It’s all a bit nuts.
Zak Rodgers is half hanging over the ornate balcony of the auditorium in the Sir Geoffrey Perrin Building. Below, director Peter Hambleton is bellowing up to him to perform his lines in a high female voice.
‘‘Now do it in a low female voice, like really guttural. Let’s try that out.’’ He jiggles about excitedly. He is clearly having fun.
Rodgers delivers a right-royal-fishmonger wife performance and everyone below laughs uproariously.
An animated discussion on Rodger’s costume ensues and the suggestions get more and more extreme – hair rollers, bright lipstick, even leg waxing is considered for longer than was probably necessary.
Nuts.
The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s funniest play, slapstick in its nature with puns, mishaps, mistaken identities and demonic possession. It is the play that Hambleton has chosen for this year’s Summer Shakespeare and his approach with his young cast is clearly to fill rehearsals with laughter, but also to make the play clear and understood.
He talks through the lines in everyday speak, peppered with a bit of swearing for emphasis. It works. Rodgers adjusts his monologue and it sounds more believable. Hambleton believes Shakespeare wrote for the masses and so in his Comedy of Errors, he is striving to make it relevant and accessible.
The play is staged in the now, as if Shakespeare only just wrote it specifically to be set in Palmerston North.
‘‘It’s modern with a twist and the audience will recognise some things about Palmy in there. It’s local and it’s right here, right now. We want to make something that is unique and feels special and celebrates here.’’
Summer Shakespeare has been running in Palmerston North and supported by Massey University for the past 15 years. With local performers, technicians and artists getting involved, it has become part of the landscape.
This year, it is taking over the pond in the Esplanade Rose Garden and in true Hambleton style – nine years ago he used the miniature railway for All’s Well
that Ends Well – it will be fully incorporated into the play.
‘‘We decided to feature it and there is a story that is told at the beginning of the play about a family on a boat and there is a shipwreck and they end up in different countries and grow up separately. So, we are using the pond as a fun way of integrating that.’’
The audience is encouraged to bring a miniature or toy boat to put in the pond – a sort of BYO prop.
‘‘We want people to get involved. Summer Shakespeare is for everyone. The cast all have a real sense of ownership and pride. It’s a really cool tradition.’’
There are new faces this year, plenty of Massey University students, and there are old ones too. Matt Waldin has lost count of how many he has been in. Ethan Burmeister is another Summer Shakespeare addict and then there is Mark Kilsby – he has been in all but one.
He remembers almost dying in Hambleton’s last play, when he had to ‘‘run around like a mad man after the train’’ and this year he thinks it might be the long monologues that could do it.
‘‘It tells a story and it progresses, which makes it a bit easier to learn, but yes, I do one long speech, then do a few lines before launching into another one.’’ He rolls his eyes and laughs. ‘‘It’s a comedy, but it might turn into a tragedy.’’
Sat next to Hambleton during rehearsal, Kilsby does an exaggerated stage wink as Hambleton says to Rodgers: ‘‘Now, just lean over a bit more and really yell.’’
Hambleton is enjoying having a young cast and he says he is really challenging them to ‘‘reach a little further than they might normally and they have all been magnificent in that sense’’.
The off-stage roles have also been filled by students and people who want a bit of firsthand experience. They too are getting to push themselves a little further. Jodi Walker has been returning home to Feilding each weekend from her new home in Wellington to design and create the costumes for the play.
Walker is a recent Toi Whakaari costume construction graduate who likes to think of doing Summer Shakespeare as a full circle for her. She cut her costume-design teeth while competing in Feilding High School’s Evento: Wearable Arts Awards for five years and is happy to be doing her first job out of university in Palmerston North.
‘‘It’s going to be contemporary, but elevated, so it’s not just what they would wear every day. That’s what really interests me, like how do you design a contemporary costume but make it purposeful?’’
She says to think of the clothes in Sex in the City, subtly special and cleverly designed. ‘‘I’m also taking references from Mamma
Mia and other pop culture. And I’m also trying to make it relatable in the Palmy context. Where do they come from? Where do the outsiders come from? I ask those things in a New Zealand way and think about how that can be portrayed in costume.’’
The budget is teeny, but Walker says she loves the challenge that presents and the op-shop visits that it entails. ‘‘I love op-shops. There are always treasures to be found.’’
Girls are going to be guys and guys will be girls. Gender bending is something that Hambleton is throwing into the confusion, chaos and crazy comedy.
It’s something Shakespeare played with too and now putting it into a 2018 context the layers pile on.
‘‘The audience can use their imagination and put their own understanding and spin on things. We value their intelligence.’’
Their laughter too, that definitely needs to come along to the Esplanade. And a sense of drama and transformation. The Rose Garden will become a new world, with hints of familiarity, but with large doses of the absurd and whimsical.
Bring a picnic, bring a boat, wander through the gardens and smell the roses, for there is magic to be found on a summer’s night in Palmerston North. The Comedy of Errors will be performed at the Esplanade’s Rose Gardens from March 1-10.