The Hamlet we’ll see in Copithorne’s production is charismatic 25-year-old Hunter Cardinal, the Romeo of her 2016 production of that early Shakespeare tragedy. And Hamlet’s friends are not only college-age too, but naturally, in a young crowd, it makes sense that his pals include women. So you do occasionally wonder why it’s taken a smart guy so long to graduate. Since the role is one of the most demanding and arduous in the entire repertoire - he has more lines to speak, by almost two to one, than any other Shakespeare character - it almost often goes to seasoned Shakespeareans in their late ‘30s or ‘40s (Olivier was 41). Hamlet were played by an actor who is not middle-aged? After all, as Copthorne points out, Shakespeare’s troubled and probing tragic hero is, as written, a college student. Lots of conversation about gender and identity!” “There’s a long tradition of drag in Shakespeare, of course…. The Antipholi are played by women, Belinda Cornish and Kristi Hansen you can tell they’re twins by their blue coiffures. Since half the Freewill Shakespeare ensemble are women this year, Horak and co are having sport with cross-gender casting. Two brothers, both named Antipholus (one from Ephesus, one from Syracuse), have servants, both named Dromio - and that’s just the start. “Dave Horak had way too much time to think about it!” laughs Horak of an enterprise to which the scientific terms “zany,” “wacky,” and “completely shameless” might profitably be applied. It’s a place where you can buy into all the dress-up, all the putting on of character…. Where Ephesus (comedy central) is peopled by people in costumes. “Lots of movement and colour! Lots of people going from one place to another! Classic Hollywood, kinda 1950s,” says Horak, the artistic director of Edmonton Actors Theatre. And then I landed on the idea of a film set….” I’ve seen quite a few (versions) that took that approach. “Something about the comedy suggested vaudeville. The Freewill restriction - the house esthetic, and an appealing one for the great outdoors - was “I couldn’t do an Elizabethan period production.” And, pratfalls in doublet-and-hose aren’t hilarious anyhow. So, “somewhere contemporary,” says Horak re-tracing the course of his thoughts. A transient kind of place!” Sixteen actors, a veritable small town’s worth, was a cause to celebrate. It seems important to the type of comedy it is.
What would change if … he had a company of 16? “When I re-read the play, says Horak,“what struck me was how busy the world is, all these people charging through the marketplace of a town…. “In its own original way it was really very faithful to the play!” he laughs.
The last time Horak directed The Comedy of Errors, in 2013, it was a four-actor rap version: The Bomb-Itty Of Errors came at you in a high-speed volley of iambic pentameter, as the title suggests. What would change if …? There’s a question Horak and Copithorne floated for the two high-contrast Shakespeares that co-habit the park this summer. Marianne Copithorne’s production of Hamlet, the first one at the festival in a dozen years, opens Friday on the same stage, with the same cast. The challenging 30th anniversary edition of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival opens tonight with Dave Horak’s production of The Comedy of Errors, an early madcap comedy of escalating confusion unleashed by not one, but two, sets of twins.
One’s the shortest play Shakespeare wrote, one the longest (though never performed untrimmed). There’s a vast expanse of theatrical distance between the two shows you’ll see alternating in the outdoor Shakespeare festival that opens tonight in the river valley. Tonight’s show is a comedy, and a farcical one at that tomorrow’s is a tragedy, widely regarded as the theatrical peak that must be scaled. Hunter Cardinal in Hamlet, Freewill Shakespeare Festival.
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