2024-07-06 09:31:40
Love in vain is a comedy of language, a play in which William Shakespeare presented himself as a virtuoso of words and which, despite the burlesque mood, ends courageously for its time without a happy ending. Last week, her new production was presented by the Summer Shakespeare Festival. They will last until September 7 at Prague Castle and further on in Brno or Ostrava.
The play from 1598 is appearing for the third time at the popular show, which welcomed almost 90,000 spectators last year. After Ivan Rajmont in 2002 and ten years later Ondrej Spišák, Filip Nuckolls took over the direction this year.
Together with the dramaturg Michal Pětík, he builds on a careful reading of the text, which in itself is imaginative, situational, and above all full of potential humor. The creators do not impose other interpretations on it. They bring it to life on stage with the aim of entertaining the audience and offering them their own associations, sometimes coarse-grained with hidden meanings, sometimes with a current political sting.
The quartet of gentlemen from Navarre, i.e. the historic country in the north of Spain, led by King Ferdinand, rashly undertake a three-year study and the associated renunciation of worldly pleasures, including any contact with women. However, a French princess arrives at the royal court with her ladies-in-waiting, so breaking the promise is easy.
It wouldn’t be Shakespeare if the story didn’t span several lines. While the aristocrats court their female counterparts with the help of games and masks, “in the basement” the eccentric Spaniard Armado, with the help of the local baron Kotrba, somewhat bizarrely woos the village girl Žakeneta. All this is echoed by the output of two pseudo-scholars, the priest Nathan and the teacher Holofernes.
Sylva Zimula Hanáková’s costumes do not anchor the production in a specific time, they leave room for imagination, and thus the social differences between the characters become central to the interpretation.
The ladies of the princess’s entourage are enjoying the sauna. Pictured are Kristýna Daňhelová, Karolína Vágnerová, Anna Fialová and Anna Kameníková. | Photo: Pavel Hejný
The Spanish nobles, despite certain costume attributes such as family symbols or krumpled displays, resemble today’s golden youth. Quite possibly, during one of their endless binges on alcohol, they swore to renounce, but in the morning they don’t remember anything about it. Having tried all available pleasures and can buy everything and everyone, it is all the more difficult for them to accept a love rejection. Or, as it turns out in the end, by its one-year postponement.
Girls are no saints either. Their behavior resembles carefree late teens who enjoy the big city life before the death of the princess’s father intervenes as the first encounter with a not entirely rosy reality. In the opening scene, they are all equipped with rose-tinted Lennon glasses. Members of the upper social class spend their time waiting for an audience by shooting a bow. The creators took this idea from a dialogue about hunting, but not game, but one gender on another.
Later, the ladies of the princess’s entourage enjoy a sauna. Since they are not allowed to enter the building according to the men’s commitment, they find temporary shelter in a tent. It smokes intensely, women climb out in sheets and with towels on their heads. Just before the meeting with the supposed Russians, as their suitors jokingly disguise themselves, they put on a mask – in this case a skin mask – in accordance with Shakespeare’s instructions.
The authors could not simply throw away the disguise of King Ferdinand and his entourage as Russians prescribed by the author, especially at the time of the Russian war in Ukraine. They used it to make a topical, but not violent, comment. The appearance of the participants is reminiscent of specific persons – Vladimir Putin in a red sports overall with an earring on his head, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Patriarch Kirill in a traditional robe. The last mask refers to the uniform of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, but it is complemented by a red ribbon with the letter Z, a symbol painted on the military vehicles of the Russian armed forces during the invasion of Ukraine.
Shakespeare’s line responding to the question of what to wish for is particularly explosive: “We only want peace and a friendly reception.” The authors of the production only added the sentence to it: “What the Russians always do.”
The production is graced by brilliant acting. The picture features Petr Čtvrtníček as Holofernes, Leoš Noha as the curate Nathan and Kryštof Rímský as the guard Hňup. | Photo: Pavel Hejný
In addition to the sauna, Lukáš Kuchinka’s scene also brings the motif of rest as a path to the harmony of soul and body into the production. Except for the tent on the left side of the stage, it includes a fountain with a gazebo and two side pairs of stairs, depicted in the spirit of baroque illusionism. The fountain gradually transforms into a hot tub, in which men are lounging. The laminated decoration without perspective is reminiscent of the background of gallant scenes, i.e. themes drawn from the love affairs and pastimes of the nobility.
The illusion with which scenography works is one of the themes of the text. The Baroque cited here builds on it – as well as on the phenomenon of the transience of human existence. In the play Futile Love Effort, Shakespeare also expresses himself several times about the baroque themes of death, nothingness and emptiness, including the word vanity used in the title. Earthly wellness will one day end, just like male pleasure in a fountain that the Kudrna drive will release in an unguarded moment.
Kudrna is a man of the people. He comes out of the production as a racist slacker with a sixth sense for getting rich and not getting ahead of himself. Instead of the remuneration mentioned in the original text, i.e. a monetary reward in addition to the salary, it operates with the payment of dividends. In this role, Jiří Maryško presents another of his exclusive, noisy crunchers, of which he has already played several.
Leoš Noha and Petr Čtvrtníček also played their usual but full-blooded peeps and antics. Their curate Nathan and teacher Holofernes are to demonstrate the decline of the intellectual classes. With their black-and-white clothes, they seem to refer to the movie pair of scheming counselors from the fairy tale The Crazy Sad Princess, whose theme song was “Let’s cook, let’s cook, speculate, intrigue”.
Actors Adam Ernest and Marie Štípková, alternated by Lucie Polišenská, elevated the secondary roles of eccentric characters Armand and his vigorous sweetheart Žakeneta. It is this villager who closes the play with a poetic song about a cuckoo, which instills fear in all the men with its cuckooing. Shakespeare’s original text was set to music by Daniel Fikejz.
The production is generally graced by brilliant acting, as well as the fact that everyone on stage can be understood. Anna Fialová, her suitor, the King of Navarre, embodied the princess in a very present and at times even with healthy exaggeration, played with great determination and charm by Filip Březina, famous for the recent TV series Smysl pro tumor. From his troupe, perhaps less well-known to the general public, but theatrically experienced and charismatic Jan Jankovský in the role of Longaville, cannot be omitted.
Even the little things will delight, such as when the costumes of court characters change with the mood, alternating or combining elements of the wardrobe – ranging from historical clothes to fantastic designs à la Star Wars.
The futile pursuit of love, staged in the recently renovated Supreme Burgrave of Prague Castle, guarantees a quality outdoor summer event. It relies on stars, who, unlike many such projects, take their work seriously and behind their popularity are demonstrable dispositions. Director Filip Nuckolls works with them artistically responsibly, and creatively.
Let his production be an example to all those who intend to artistically shape the Summer Shakespeare Festival in the years to come.
Theatre
William Shakespeare: Love’s Vain Pursuit
(Presented by the Summer Shakespeare Festival)
Directed by Filip Nuckolls
Supreme Burgrave of Prague Castle, premiere on June 26, the production is on the program until September 7.