will he was

Today brings the 450th birthday of William Shakespeare, or rather the day that Shakespeare's birthday is celebrated.  Actual birth records weren't always clear back then, but since Shakespeare was baptized around this time and died on April 23rd, the same date is used to mark his birth.  Nonetheless, Shakespeare was of course a poet, iconic playwright, perhaps a Taurus, and the man responsible for keeping generations of actors busy portraying characters in his major works, as well as portraying Shakespeare himself.   (Most of the actors have been British but then again, Shakespeare was a fellow Englishman.)

Shakespeare's plays have also inspired artists to paint scenes from his plays, several of which are featured below.  And personally my favorite Shakespearean passage is from Macbeth and found to be nightly true:  "Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care. The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath. Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast."

Pictured after Shakespeare:  Portia by John Everett Millais, 1886; The First Madness of Ophelia by D.G. Rossetti, 1864; Othello and Desdemona by Antonio Muñoz Degraín, 1880; and Miranda - The Tempest by John William Waterhouse, 1916

the artful theatre

Chicago's Goodman Theatre is presently showcasing John Logan's Red, with its reincarnation of artist Mark Rothko holding court on stage (I'm not calling him an Abstract Expressionist because he apparently didn't want to be minimized by a label). Last week would have been Rothko's birthday on September 25th, and then Mayor Rahm (I'm calling him by his first name because he just seems to be a first-name mayor) declared "Paint the Town Red Day" in honor of the play, and it was all a dramatically fun, art-centered crimson tide.

However, though I haven't seen Red Rothko yet, three diverse Chicago theater-goers I've spoken to have noted that the play that recently and quietly won their hearts is The Pitman Painters at the Timeline Theatre. Lee Hall of Billy Elliot fame is the author, and the story involves a group of British miners from Ashington who took a sponsored art appreciation class during the 1930s. Their instructor found the miners to be less than interested in the appreciation aspects of the lessons, so he urged them to approach the subject directly and create their own works. The men became the Ashington Group and ultimately found critical success and a patron, along with broadening their own horizons and sense of collective and personal identity. Yet they still stayed in the mines and true to their "pit" roots, and if this doesn't sound like the next The King's Speech-type movie adaptation that will net plenty of Academy Award nominations I don't know what does.

Here's a link to the Ashington Group's website, and the tiny pictured work is by Pitman Painter Harry Wilson (Ashington Colliery)

a visit to the hot l baltimore

Steppenwolf Theatre's revival of the late Lanford Wilson's 1970s hit The Hot L Baltimore is currently happening through the end of May, with direction by Tina Landau and a cast of many fine actors. The set is also impressively rundown and offers a two-story action view, featuring stairs leading to rooms without doors to allow for a kind of voyeuristic, back of a dollhouse effect. If you can sit close to the stage and you're fascinated by authentic props, you'll enjoy noting how magazines leafed through are truly from the 1970s, and that the TV set shows Pringles commercials of the era -- and that some super-groovy ribbed blue bellbottoms are worn by Bill, the desk clerk. And if you lived through the seventies or have a more youthful retro interest in them, the timeline boards of the decade's major events and hit songs set up in the theater lobby will likely round out your nostalgic experience.

Back in the real day, The Hot L Baltimore debuted in March of 1973 and ran through 1976 at New York's Circle in the Square. It showcased the then-new talents of forever tough cookie Conchata Ferrell (who so refreshingly dominates Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men), and Judd Hirsch as Paul, a young man in search of his elusive grandfather. At that time, the play surely had a very different vibe, because it was an immediate representation of 1970s upheaval and change, and America wasn't so familiar with the lives of sassy hookers and/or needed to come to terms with the fact that many of its former glories were crumbling and in the line of the wrecking ball.

So essentially, The Hot L's revival now is pretty much evocative and not a social slice of life, with a note of melancholy added due to the recent death of playwright Lanford Wilson. The play is further deepened by many primary roles being filled by African American actors in this production, including standout performances by de'Adre Aziza, Alana Arenas, Namir Smallwood, Jon Michael Hill, James Vincent Meredith, TaRon Patton and Jacqueline Williams.

Still, if the play is truly supposed to take place in the early 1970s, changing the racial makeup of the cast would have--at the time--caused all sorts of alternate issues and dynamics. Yes, Baltimore has a larger black population than other cities, but perhaps the elderly Mr. Morse might harbor some old school inherent prejudices, or perhaps the fact that Bill the desk clerk is attracted to The Girl might create a greater interracial frisson of conflict -- and the idea of a brash young black woman and her timid brother planning to farm acres in predominately white 1970s Utah seems even more worrisome. Mrs. Oxenham is into making a traditional African fashion statement -- what consciousness-raising led her to that? And why does Mr. Katz dislike Jackie so much? Is it hard knocks disapproval or just, as she complains, because of the way she dresses?

I have to wonder whether being in the front row made me connect more with some of the characters and have more questions about them. Probably too many questions, because in the long run it seems best to just take The Hot L Baltimore as a retro piece -- to enjoy the team effort, the set, the props and the onstage radio crackling out soul tunes, and don't really think that much about the rest.

Pictured: Bill (Jon Michael Hill) and The Girl (Alison Torem) in The Hot L Baltimore