The Book of Will

At Main Street Theater

Or: Publish or Vanish

Why is it that historical fiction should produce such anxiety? We know, indisputably, that Shakespeare’s plays were published in the first folio in 1623, thus ensuring their continuance not just after their creator's death but cementing them as a cornerstone of English, if not World, culture. Yet, watching Lauren Gunderson’s The Book of Will, I felt as sick in my stomach as Ben Johnson (John Feltch) on a three day bender, more than I’ve felt at any interaction of Joan of Arc or the death of the Titanic, consumed with worry that the plays that have lifted and defined so much might, by a publisher’s greed, or a sudden death, or a weakness of will might be lost forever.

The harnessed team of this play is snorting and stamping Henry Condell (Dwight Clark) and shying but powerful John Hemming (Joel Sander), two of the King’s Men’s original players, dear friends of the three-years-dead Bard, and men possessed of an impossible task: Collecting and preserving the plays as Shakespeare wrote them, without experience, funding, or even a complete script to set down. Fitted together jigsaw-like from historical facts of the endeavor (Gunderson is rightly lauded for her keen historical sense; just look at her much sharper and more nuanced* life of Henrietta Levitt, Silent Sky), The Book of Will keeps shifting perspective until all the pieces fall into place. But what makes it more than a merely satisfactory is her vibrant dialog in deft historicalese, percolating with humor and feeling.

Sometimes though, Gunderson does crank things around a few superfluous times, particularly in Henry’s bullish insistence on getting the book done and John’s mulish desire on not attempting so dangerous a project. Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom put aside a similarly grasping and prying project in half the time, though to her credit dusts Henry with a fresh sprinkling of humor every time (so many Pericles jokes) and gives us peaks into Johns fears, including, his outburst, over the memory of not just Will but the other King’s Men gone, “Failing them is worse than losing them.” We are also treated to the wives and daughters of these demi-immortal players: Alice Hemmings (Brittny Bush), Elizabeth Condell (Elizabeth Marshall Black) and the impishly matronly Rebecca Hemmings (Ivy Castle Simpson), a small college of Athenas and Penthesilei dispensing wisdom, bolstering hearts, and having a grand old time amongst themselves (they even get a little verse in without having to dress as boys dressing as girls. Whoa! Fast times in Southwark!)

Sadly in the Main Street production can only match the honesty of Gunderson’s production, early able to capture its spark. The scene changes (interminable shifting of tables and hanging of sheets, and scored by the most insipid marimba in Texas#)bog, while the more periphery characters were tackled by mincing creatures as bad as those actors tearing Shakespeare to shreds whose half-asses John and Henry set out to kick. Fortunately, we have Bush’s winningness and Castle Simpson’s Guile and more over the likes of Rutherford Cravens who offers a double feature as the expansive Richard Burbage and the nefarious publisher William Jaggard. The opening moments of the play, quick and plosive as they are with the disgust of three old men is hard to hear, but when Cravens starts in on A Speech, the whole theater quiets in that rare silence where even the gods are listening. Feltch as Ben Johnson, striking a perfect balance between moribund and sloshing nabs the best laughs of the night, nose high in the air, flagon waving in his hand, a contemptuous but heartfelt outburst never far away. Clark and Sander hold their own of course, able to cast splendid zingers and heave emotion from the very darkest depths without a hint of performative strain. They absolutely triumph in a scene in the darkened Globe, Gunderson’s highlight of the show, a matching of language and insight (maybe as good as Shakespeare). A dialog about the need and the power of stories and why some things should last even though in the end nothing does.

* There’s my blade, Regional Theaters of America. Fight me.

# And, more’s the point, a Jacobean Marimba?