Q&A: Shakespeare in the Park Director J. Clark Nicholson

When I saw that the Gamut Theatre Group had chosen to put on Love’s Labour’s Lost as their annual Shakespeare in the Park show, I was, um… surprised. First of all, let’s get this out on the table, yes, I was an English major and I have read plenty of Shakespeare. Snicker, snicker. Let’s move on. Anyway, I was surprised by the selection because it’s not a show that most companies will put on, largely because it’s nearly incomprehensible.

That’s not to say that the story isn’t a good one and that the show isn’t funny — it is and it is. It’s just that almost any Shakespeare scholar will tell you that while Love’s Labour’s Lost is Shakespeare’s first work of true genius, it is also one of his most difficult reads. The play is about the King of Navarre and companions Berowne, Dumaine and Longaville who swear off women for three years in order to concentrate on study. At least they say they are going to until the Princess of France and some of her ladies pay a visit. Sexy right? Decidedly less sexy are the pages upon pages of highly-intellectual Latin puns. Even wikipedia calls the play “pedantic.”

But after reading in the Patriot-News that director J. Clark Nicholson had edited the play heavily and taken inspiration from the John Hughes comedies of the 80’s I was intrigued. I gave Nicholson a call and he assured me that he has nixed the archaic wordplay and left behind a pretty good story. He's got me convinced and I'd like to go see the show, which opens its two-week run tonight. Here’s what he had to say:

Q: How do you go about picking a show? How far in advance did you know that you were going to be putting on Love’s Labour’s Lost?
A: We usually know a year in advance. I pick them myself; I’m the artistic director. I generally just pick shows that I think the audience will enjoy.

Q: Love’s Labour’s Lost is not one of Shakespeare’s better-known works. Are you worried that will hurt attendance?
A: I’m really not. We’ve been doing Shakespeare in the park for a while. This is our fifteenth season and our audience is pretty faithful. I think they generally just know it’s Shakespeare in the Park time and they come on out. We’ve done enough really popular ones. It’s a good show; it’s very funny. I’m expecting a good audience turnout.

Q: It’s also not one of Shakespeare’s most accessible works. My recollection of it is that it’s got a lot of pretty delicate Latin wordplay. Are you concerned that the work is not going to resonate with modern audiences?
A: I edited it fairly hard. Usually when this show is done it is edited relatively hard. The play spends a lot of time making fun of overly intellectual wordplay, but while it makes fun of it, it uses a lot of it. I edited that down and tried to get to the essences of the story, which is really a coming of age story. One of the ways that I conceptualized it was thinking a lot about the coming of age stories of John Hughes back in the 1980’s. The “Brat Pack” movies. They were generally about smart kids who were making the transition to adulthood, and I think (John Hughes) did that very well. I don’t think this is really all that different from that. (Our show) takes place in the 80’s. It moves pretty quickly and it’s a good story, there are some great characters in there.

Q: Does it give you pause to rework Shakespeare?
A: What I’m doing is relatively standard; a lot of companies do this. What I do is actually kind of the same thing Shakespeare did in his own time. When you see “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” they talk a lot about Duke Theseus. Theseus was a Greek hero, but Shakespeare updates him for an Elizabethan audience. If you had gone to see “Julius Caesar” at the Globe Theater, the folks would have been walking around in Elizabethan costumes (instead of Roman). So that’s how these shows have been done since they were first performed.

I think audiences are pretty used to it. We did “Taming of the Shrew” as kind of a 50’s TV rerun a few years ago. It was kind of an “I Love Lucy” take on the script. All of the characters were black and white and the set was entirely black and white and it was very successful.

Q: The weather doesn’t look too hot for opening night, are you ready to go otherwise?
A: If it doesn’t go tonight it is going to be running a couple of other weeks. We’re ready to go. We rained out the second half of rehearsal last night but everything is in good shape. We generally do eight performances and if we get six in we’re pretty happy.