Bartholomew Fair Cover.indd - Stratford Festival

More documents

Recommendations

Info

“Remember you are but Adam, flesh and blood” by Alexander Leggatt Held in the heat of late August in the disreputable London suburb of Smithfield, the Fair that gives Jonson’s play its title is a feast for the senses: food, drink, songs, trinkets and sex are all for sale. At the centre is the pig-tent run by the Gargantuan pigwoman Ursla, whose sweating flesh embodies the steamy atmosphere in which she works, and whose 2 Below from top, left to right | Director Antoni cimolino (centre) with members of the compAny in reheArsAl; composer steven pAge (left) AnD peter JAmes hAworth (solomon); briAn tree (humphrey wAsp) facing page, from top, left to right | christopher prentice (winwife), JonAthAn goAD (QuArlous) AnD AlAnA hAwley (grAce wellborn); tom mccAmus (Justice overDo), skye brAnDon (hAggis) AnD michAel spencer-DAvis (bristle); DAlAl bADr (mistress overDo) AnD trent pArDy (bArtholomew cokes) following page, from top | Quincy Armorer (nightingAle); lucy peAcock (urslA) AnD Antoni cimolino with members of the compAny photogrAphy by scott wishArt/beAcon herAlD tent, besides selling ale and roast pork, doubles as a privy and a brothel. Jonson dramatizes both the carnival energy of the Fair and its gritty commercial side. Ursla gives her attendant Mooncalf a detailed lecture on the fine art of cheating customers; and we hear that the ingredients of Joan Trash’s gingerbread are “stale bread, rotten eggs, musty ginger, and dead
honey.” As the ballad-singer Nightingale entertains the crowd, the cutpurse Edgworth moves among them, plying his trade. Though four centuries separate us from Jonson’s world, the Fair is a place we can still recognize: for us it calls up memories of hot lights, candy floss, calliope music, big fuzzy stuffed bears, hot dogs whose ingredients we would prefer not to know about and, in the thickest part of the crowd, pickpockets. Its climactic entertainment is a puppet show in which a classic love story is reduced to raucous obscenity. Rowdy, sleazy and dangerous, it provokes the question: who would want to go there? The answer, it seems, is nearly everybody. The play opens in a Puritan household, a place we might think was as far removed as it could be from the carnival licentiousness of the Fair. But even in that household the Fair exerts a magnetic pull. Littlewit, author of the puppet play, wants to see it performed, and circumvents his Puritan in-laws by getting his pregnant wife, Win, to pretend a longing for roast pig so that they can visit the Fair for the sake of her health. The family’s resident spiritual advisor, Zealof-the-Land Busy, not only goes along with the idea but goes along to the Fair, where he plans to indulge in his two favourite pastimes: “I will eat exceedingly, and prophesy.” Littlewit has drawn up a licence for the marriage of Bartholomew Cokes and Grace Wellborn, but Cokes, an amiable idiot with a thirtysecond attention span and a childlike delight in everything around him, is more interested in going to the Fair than in his approaching marriage. Cokes’s servant Wasp, whose futile attempts to control his master leave him in a state of perpetual rage, and Grace, who is too dignified for the Fair, both resist going; but they are swept along by the tide. Two men-about-town, Quarlous and Winwife, go along as the audience does, to watch the fun. And besides, they both have their eyes on Grace. Everyone, in short, goes to the Fair, whether they want to or not, and it is not just an afternoon’s outing after which normal life resumes. Virtually everyone who goes there is in some way transformed, sometimes in ways that reveal a disconcerting affinity between clean-living London and disreputable Smithfield. Two respectable city wives are recruited as prostitutes, and Jonson drops hints that their new roles are just a more direct expression of the lives of women in the conventional world. At the start of the play, Littlewit shows off 3
Page 1 and 2: Tom Patterson Theatre May 27 To ocT
Page 3: A Cosmos of Creativity Shakespeare
Page 7 and 8: surprising capacity to pull togethe
Page 9 and 10: The Cast A puritan household in lon
Page 11 and 12: Production Director of Production D
Page 13 and 14: Antoni cimolino - director 22nd sea
Page 15 and 16: keira loughran - choreographer, ass
Page 17 and 18: lucy peacock - actor 22nd season: M
Page 19 and 20: A Salute to Our Donors We extend he
Page 21 and 22: Annual Donors (Reflects gifts made
Page 23 and 24: Annual Donors Dr. & Mrs. Greg Johns
Page 25 and 26: RECOGNIZES THE OUTSTANDING ARTISTIC
Page 28: 09 Season Festival Theatre Macbeth

Bartholomew Fair Cover.indd - Stratford Festival

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?