Bingo is a play about the end of Shakespeare’s life, the title presumably having something to do with the concept of ‘when one’s number is up’. (This last is pure conjecture—no actual evidence to support this.) Whatever the case, I’ve been having a time of it correcting confusion among my friends, when I brightly say: “I had a good time at ‘Bingo’ last night”.
And I did—have lovely time. It was in some ways a little disappointing as well, though. ‘Zounds it makes me mad’—that this could have been a brilliant production but as yet, it isn’t. I say ‘as yet’, because it is, after all, early in the run . . . a short run (six weeks) however leaving little time to ‘get it right’. I've made bold (very bold) of making a few notes/suggestions.
Begin Notes:
This is what ‘Bingo’ at ‘Young Vic’ needs to do:
1. The most BASIC fix, TIMING. Actors! Pick up your cues, please! If you really must indulge in numerous and well-past-the-due-date pregnant pauses, do so AFTER saying the first couple of words of your lines! If the problem is that you can’t remember your lines, run them with someone until you can (remember them in a ‘timely’ fashion).
2. Block the action to encourage ensemble performance—right now, in many of the scenes the actors seem to be delivering their lines like they are little islands of personal angst in a sea of monotonous vocal delivery. We all know that one would not be an actor if they didn’t want to be the centre of attention, but let us see some ‘playing’, ‘eh players? Also, and this is important, more disjunction of physical contact between Judith and Shakespeare is necessary. When she reaches for him, he should be ‘just missing it’ and/or or turning away, and she should be doing the same. Of course, there would need to be more 'reaching out' taking place (than currently is taking place) for this to read well.
3. ‘Mind the Gap’ by making those lovely times of breaching the fourth wall, more definite. Theatre-in-the-round is good and the integration of the set changes is brilliant. But if you intend to have very few or no definite SIGNALS for the audience, communicating that the show/scene has started or ended, you undercut the narrative. The audience might be struggling as it is to recall the historical events/context of the play without having to figure out if the scene has actually started or ended. If the goal behind this ‘innovative’ staging is to create the atmosphere of a genuine Elizabethan theatre experience (which would be fun if perhaps too surreal), why not add intermission entertainers, roving food vendors and a narrative commentator/herald. Oh, and a dog. People love dogs.
4. Vary the tone of delivery throughout the performance. During the second act, the things overall improve greatly but please, remember to regularly vary the tone of delivery. It’s a play, not a lecture. (For that matter, even lecturers have learned from experience that if you never vary the tone and volume of delivery, your audience will fall asleep.)
5. Instead of treating the play as a ‘serious drama’ think if it as a ‘serious comedy’ or better still, a ‘comedic tragedy’.
6. “It’s all a put-up job.” When Shakespeare in Bingo says this, the line is partially referential to one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, that ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players’. All the characters in Bingo, except Shakespeare, should be portraying themselves as a curious blend of ‘fan’ and posturing dramatist/actor, trying desperately to impress ‘The Bard’ (in order to achieve their own personal agenda). All the way through the play it should be this way. Shakespeare is a celebrity and at every moment of his life people are trying to ‘be noticed’ by him and get something from him. He plays along for the most part, in good humour (even though it does get very tiresome at times).
He is at the end of his life and is in crisis. Of what value is his work--in terms of alleviating human suffering in the world? Has he changed anything for anyone, for the better? Lessened injustice and bloodshed? For all of his material success, was he truly successful? It is the sort of self-doubt that transforms Shakespeare from god-like iconic historical figure back into a man—a good man that has made mistakes but overall done the best he can. Shakespeare essentially asks: "Is the world a better place for my having lived in it?" For most of us I suspect it is impossible to answer this sort of question with certainty. It is an excellent problem for thought however; one that hopefully inspires the audience to similar self-examination.
7. Rethink the interpersonal dynamics and character interpretations. As an example, Shakespeare in Bingo describes his wife (my interpretation of his words) as a silly, melodramatic, manipulative, overly emotional, materialistic, comical self-absorbed harpy that does nothing all day but cry. He tells his daughter Judith that she takes after her mother. Yet for the duration of the play previous to this revelation we have seen Judith characterised as a seriously ill-used, contemptuous, unsympathetic, bitter and angry woman--not particularly entertaining and a characterisation very much in conflict with how Shakespeare apparently sees her. What should the audience make of this?
In reality Judith probably is a bitter, angry and put-upon, unloved daughter (ignored by a self-interested mother and distant father). This is probably what the character internally ‘is’—but it should not necessarily be what the character externally does. The portrayal of all those ‘harpy lines’ Judith’s character is burdened with, need to be delivered with as much overtly demonstrative fervour and manipulative theatricality as possible. As another example, in the final scenes of the play, with the mother wailing in the hall and Judith going on about what a terrible man Shakespeare is for locking them out of his room (his death chamber, mind you), while they stand screaming for him to let them in . . . well, the man is DYING and his wife and daughter are laying a guilt trip on him!
Shakespeare says to his housekeeper (who has been allowed in), that it has been thirty years of this (domestic pattern)—of his wife and daughter using emotional outbursts to get money and security out of him. Now, the audience probably are aware that Shakespeare—as an artist/playwright—posits that everyone and everything around him is a performance. Are we to believe that he is right in this assessment of life or deluded? Should we see Shakespeare simply as a man that is paranoid and emotionally unavailable to his family?
We know from the sonnets that the loss of his son was devastating; Shakespeare viewed it not only with the abiding and relentless grief that a parent feels upon the death of a child, in his case his son (Sonnet XVIII), but he also would have seen the death of his son as the death of himself—of his chance to see himself when old, mirrored in the young and handsome face of a succeeding male heir (Sonnet II). The audience would probably prefer to side with Shakespeare--he is the protagonist and a sympathetic historical figure. The audience therefore will probably believe that though somewhat non-demonstrative because of personal and political depression, Shakespeare is essentially right about his family and the world: many people are manipulative, ceremonious and melodramatic, wittingly or unwittingly using sentiment as a political weapon (housed in the best of intentions). For the purposes of ‘Bingo’ such an interpretation would certainly make way for more amusing performances!
At the close of the play, for example instead of explosion of screams better suited to one of the plays from the ‘Oedipus Cycle’, why not wail with obvious melodrama to counter Stewart’s portrayal of a dying Shakespeare, balancing his reaction between ‘here we go again’ against a sense of guilt and responsibility, against just wanting to please die in peace! And after his collapse, with Judith shuffling through his papers to make sure there is no other will than the one he has slid under the door moments before, shouting to her mother not lamentations of her father’s death but indeed, that there is no other will, it would appear that not even in death does the relentless din of expectations end; the rest, for the likes of poor Shakespeare, falls quite short of silence.
BTW: Judith needs a better moment in confrontation with the death of her father. Even if she hated the man (and it isn't entirely clear that she does), it would be the moment when she realises that the war is over; that’s an important moment. I (admittedly and rather boldly) recommend that she ‘connect’ with the corpse somehow (hands on hands, head or chest--what seems 'honest' to the actors), asking: ‘Why didn’t you open the door?’ (or something very like), then compose herself, push herself away and turn to the real (more important from her perspective) task at hand, of sifting through her father's things.
*Update: if Shakespeare's 'last will and testament' ('The Will') is so important, if the whole play is about the disposition of his work and properties, about the relationship between wealth and emotional attachments . . . 'The Will' needs to be introduced as a focal object, contention and symbol--as 'The Will' and the will, if you will--at the BEGINNING of the play as a 'bookending' device for the narrative structure (to give a sense of thematic opening and closure of the story).
End Notes.
The audience should have laughed their way through this play, but left the theatre in tears. I very nearly did myself (leave the theatre in tears)—not for what it was, but for what it could have been. All that said, it was a perfectly fine production. The costumes were lovely. The set design in cooperation with how the changeovers were conducted was somewhat innovative. The lighting was nicely done--the sound design however, had brilliance and finesse.
