arts & entertainment / shakespeare sonnets
A mighty marathon of The Bard’s little stories By Helen Musa
Stacey quickly put the suggestion to him and to Canberra vocal director Dianna Nixon to do something similar for “NO longer mourn for me when I am dead,” The Bard’s anniversary. Zappa has been deep in the sonnets and while he is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71 goes, but The Street Theatre is ignoring that as it prepares to mark quick to say that it is “a fantastic idea to present the whole lot”, it must be admitted that some are weaker than others. the 400th anniversary of The Bard’s death. He has noticed the different groups, such as the swag of sonnets where Shakespeare talks to a young man In a mighty marathon of poetry and music called saying: “Hey, listen, don’t waste your life away, think about “Shakespeare: The Sonnets Out Loud”, Shakespearean settling down,” and the Dark Lady sonnets, addressed to a actor William Zappa will join counter-tenor Tobias Cole and woodwind/sax player Benn Sutcliffe in performing all swarthy mistress. While admiring Shakespeare’s dexterity, Zappa doesn’t the sonnets. consider the sonnet to be the most difficult form, prefer“To be honest, I don’t know which is my favourite ring the dactylic hexameter in Greek poetry. Shakespeare sonnet,” Zappa tells me. Yet, of Shakespeare, he says: “He had this amazing “One of my favourites is ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing gift… take the way he gets feelings then puts them like the sun’, number 130, where he says: ‘She may not into tiny lines, wonderful nuggets for acting students to look much but, hell, I love her’.” grapple with. Zappa will take on the lion’s share of the 154 sonnets, “A lot of kids at school complain that he’s sort of saying but hastens to assure “CityNews” that he won’t be learning them all off by heart – “God, no, they’d have to have asked it back to front, but look at the amazing ideas in a short format.” me two years ago,” he says. Zappa hasn’t met the other performers yet, just had a Mind you, if pushed to it, he could. A veteran of couple of phone calls sharing ideas, but says they’ll be in roles for Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre for an intensive rehearsal session with Dianna Nixon when Company, Ensemble, Belvoir Street, State Theatre of SA and Griffin, his memorable performance as Antony, for Bell he gets to Canberra. “Basically, it’s about storytelling; that’s what so wonderShakespeare Company, still stands out closely followed by ful about the sonnets, essentially they’re all little stories,” Richard III. Zappa says. Of late, Zappa has been doing storytelling renditions of “The Iliad” – he is half Greek – so when Street Theatre “Shakespeare: The Sonnets Out Loud”, The Street Theatre, 7pm, director Caroline Stacey popped into one session at the Saturday, April 30, bookings to 6247 1223 or thestreet.org.au ANU Classics Museum last year, an idea germinated.
Shakespearean actor William Zappa… “It’s about storytelling, that’s what so wonderful about the sonnets.” Photo by Lorna Sim
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30 CityNews April 7-13, 2016
Answers to the Shakespeare quiz… 1 B. Dick the Butcher 2 A. Regan 3 C. Not quite fourteen 4 B. Kiss by th’ book 5 B. Nelson Mandela 6 C. Crab the dog 7 B. The Box Office 8 C. Cannon misfired 9 A. He was eighteen 10 C. Second best bed 11 C. A fair youth 12 C. Penny Stinkards 13 A. Uranus 14 B. Tiger 15 C. Burt Reynolds 16 B. She stabs herself 17 B. 15th March 18 C. Knock knock 19 B. Jessica 20 C. Olivia 21 B. Elsinore 22 C. Laertes 23 C. Bosworth Field 24 B. Portia 25 B. Katherina 26 A. Petruchio 27 B. Dull 28 A. Dogberry 29 A. Valentine and Proteus 30 B. What You Will 31 B. Withered arm 32 C. Julius Caesar 33 A. The Ghost 34 B. Horatio 35 A. St.George’s Day
36 C. Mary Arden 37 B. Glovemaker 38 A. Lost years 39 B. Southwark 40 B. Richard Burbage 41 C. The Elephant 42 A. Romeo and Juliet 43 C. Misery 44 A. Mistress Quickly 45 C. King Charles II 46 B. Kate Keepdown 47 C. Helen of Troy 48 B. Heminge and Condell 49 B. Cause uncertain 50 C. Stratford upon Avon 51 B. Mistress Ford 52 B. Spot of blood. 53 C. The Theatre 54 B. Romeo and Juliet 55 A. Strawberries 56 A. Tolstoy 57 C. King John 58 C. Falconry 59 A. None 60 B. Edwin Booth 61 C. Baked pie 62 B. Master of the Revels 63 B. Wooden O 64 C. Nazi Germany 65 A. Macbeth 66 A. Phineas T. Barnum 67 B. Will Kempe 68 C. Ovid 69 B. Deer 70 A. Oberon
71 B. Mischievous sense of humour 72 A. Robin Goodfellow 73 C. Hotspur 74 B. Once 75 C. Anywhere 76 A. Become king 77 B. Theatre of Pompey 78 A. Serpent’s tooth 79 C. Clock in Julius Caesar 80 A. About 200,000 81 C. Macduff 82 B. English dead 83 A. Tybalt 84 C. West Side Story 85 B. Ophelia rejects him 86 B. Hamlet 87 A. Scottish Play 88 C. Fourteen lines 89 A. Sleepwalker 90 B. Rosalind 91 C. Thirty-six barrels 92 C. Verona 93 A. Susanna and Judith 94 B. Codpiece 95 A. None 96 C. Six million 97 A. Trojan War 98 C. The Winter’s Tale 99 A. Brutus 100 C. moves my bones * Shakespeare quiz compiled by Alan Veitch, creator of Quotequiz and Seven card Shakespeare. Distributed by Auspac Media