SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

 

 Shakespeare in Love. 

Original screenplay by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman. Adapted for the stage by Lee Hall. Director, set designer and sound designer Chris Baldock. Assistant director Zac Bridgman. Stage Manager and Lighting Operation. Lottie Leahy. Set realisation. Chris Baldock and cast. Lighting design. Rhiley Winnett and Chris Baldock. Costumes. Maya Hadfield. Sian Harrington, Liz St. Clair Long. Props Lottie Leahy, Chris Baldock and Cast. Publicity and Photography – Chris Baldock. Intimacy Coordination – Steph Evans. Mockingbird Theatre Company and Acting Studio. Belconnen Arts Centre February 11 – 28 at 7.30 p.m. Bookings   https://www.belcoarts.com.au/shakespeare-in-love/.

Reviewed by Peter Wilkins

Tom Cullen as Will Shakespeare Asha Forno as Thomas Kent.

Award-winning Mockingbird Theatre Company has chosen to open its 2026 season with Lee Hall’s bright and breezy stage adaptation of Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s uplifting  screenplay of Shakespeare in Love. The play’s the thing and if you loved the film you will delight in the fun and frolic of Chris Baldock’s production for Mockingbird. Stoppard’s wit and intellect sparkle in this mischievously inventive juggling game with Shakespeare’s theatre. Playwright  Lee Hall ensures that the comedy of errors and mistaken identities and true love’s foibles are not lost on an audience. 

Asha Forno as Lady Viola De Lesseps

Will Shakespeare (Tom Cullen) is struggling to write his comedy Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter. Richard Burbage (Richard Manning) demands a play for his theatre. Kit Marlowe (James Phillips) helps the struggling Shakespeare to find the words for Sonnet 18 to woo the beautiful Viola De Lesseps (Asha Forno) (Could she be the Dark Lady of the Sonnets?). Viola disguises as Thomas Kent to play the part of Romeo and face the ire of   Lord Edmund Tilney (Sachin Nayak), Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth 1st. (Liz St. Clair Long). Today’s feminists would howl down the sexist suitor Lord Wessex (Bruce Hardie) as Shakespeare once again proved that the course of true love never did run smooth.

Sian Harrington as the Nurse

Director Baldock has taken on a huge task to direct Shakespeare in Love with a mix of experienced actors in the key roles while encouraging emerging actors in less prominent roles. With a cast of twenty or so, it is a bold and brave move by Canberra’s renowned director of Mockingbird Theatre in his intimate studio under the auspices of Belconnen Arts Centre. Opening night delivered the entertaining promise of greater things to come. It is no mean feat to bring Stoppard and Norman’s witty, funny and ingeniously clever insight into Shakespeare’s life, times and work to life. It begs the question, “Can the intimate Mockingbird studio contain the vasty deeds of the Bard’s wide world. On opening night it was clear that much thought and imagination had gone into lending authenticity to the play. This was in no small way due to some excellent performances and much spirited gusto in Baldock’s company of revellers.

Ethan Wiggin as Sam. Asha Forno as Thomas Kent 

Baldock has cast well. Cullen’s Will Shakespeare and Forno’s Viola/Juliet as the play’s romantic couple are a delight to watch, whether as the struggling playwright or the lady who would act upon the Elizabethan stage. There is both charm and truth in their performance and they are well supported by the dashing Darcy Worthy‘s Ned Alleyn as Mercutio. As Will’s Muse James Phillips’s deliciously camp Kit Marlowe begs the debate about who wrote the Bard’s plays. Other notable performances are Sian Harrington’s flustery Nurse, Ethan Wiggins’s comical boy actor Sam as Juliet and Sachin Nayak as a Malvolio-like Lord Chamberlain. Experienced actors Richard Manning as the bombastic Richard Burbage, Bruce Hardie as the villainous misogynist Lord Wessex and Liz St. Clair Long, resplendent and powerfully authoritative as the  Virgin Queen command the stage with assured presence.

Liz St. Clair LOng as Queen Elizabeth 1st.

Aficionados of the Bard’s life and work will delight in spotting the references in a play that offers the perfect opportunity to brush up your Shakespeare. Baldock directs with a keen sense for the dramatic and the melodramatic from Anto Hermida’s art of coarse acting with his grimacing and heavily accented Henslowe, Ashton Casha’s stuttering Adam or the moments of tender love and reverence at the sad news of Marlowe’s fate. Mockingbird’s production is more than a cascade of mishaps and misconceptions, interspersed with a serious assortment of faithfully performed moments from Romeo and Juliet. It is both a love letter and a protest. It decries the injustice of society’s assertion that actors are mere rogues and vagabonds or the assumption that if women were permitted to tread the stage they would be nothing more than prostitutes.

Comedy and tragedy remain the Janus faces of the human condition and Mockingbird’s production of Shakespeare in Love is the laughing face of life that masks a lesson for us all.