Pride’s ‘Lion’ purposely diverse
Actor wanted to play roles he loves
King Henry II of England was a short white man. At 6foot-8, Milwaukee actor Bill Jackson, 66, is a strikingly tall black man.
But it’s Jackson who will be playing one of England’s greatest kings when Jackson’s newly formed Pride Theatre Company begins performances of James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter” Thursday at Alchemist Theatre.
“Even when we’re seeing great black theater like ‘Fences’ or ‘Dreamgirls,’ there’s a sense that we’re saying, ‘let’s put all the black people over there,’ ” Jackson said during a prerehearsal conversation on the Alchemist stage. “But what if I want to play the roles I loved in college?”
The role of Henry was among those Jackson fell for back then. “I like strong male characters,” Jackson said during a conversation in which he was often very much in character, repeatedly referring to himself as Henry. “Henry has built an empire that’s bigger than Charlemagne’s. He’s led well. And he’s a warrior.”
In Goldman’s play, 50-yearold Henry is at constant loggerheads with his estranged wife, 61-year-old Eleanor (played here by Liz Norton), who he’s had under lock and key for 10 years following her efforts to overthrow him.
Henry also has spotty relations with the couple’s three surviving boys: Richard, Geoffrey and John. And he’s sleeping with Alais, a young French princess who’d been pledged to Richard.
It’s the perfect setup for a Christmas get-together, which is where we find this dysfunctional family toward year’s end in 1183.
“It’s a family comedy,” Jackson said, while admitting that the accompanying nostalgia and regret, involving a couple who’d begun as a legend before becoming a beautiful ruin, can also induce tears. Eleanor’s rhetorical question captures Goldman’s unique balance of mordant wit and melancholy despair: “Well, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?”
“I was the only one in the theater who laughed at that line,” Jackson said, recalling a previously seen production. “I’m hoping the audience will know it’s all right to laugh.” Jackson likened “Lion” to another 1960s comedy with tragic overtones featuring a stormy marriage: Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
As with George and Martha in Albee’s play, “the greatest weakness and greatest virtue of all the characters is their love for one another,” Jackson said. It will be Henry’s downfall.
The sons plotting his doom will be played by a black actor (Derrion Brown), an American Indian actor (Shayne Steliga) and a white actor (Nicholas Callan Haubner); a Latina (Ashley Rodriguez) embodies Alais.
“This isn’t open casting,” Jackson said. “It’s deliberately going against traditional casting. I don’t see enough of this in Milwaukee.”
Jackson isn’t yet sure whether Pride Theatre Company will bring us more of it. “I created this company for the sole purpose of doing this play,” he said, while admitting that cast members have been asking whether Pride might roar on stage again in the future.
The answer to that question can wait. First, this lion must take us back to a medieval winter — reminding us, as do his casting choices, that some themes are both timeless and universal.