I very rarely see productions of plays I have myself once been in because I know them too well to enjoy them, because I am jealous by nature and hate that I haven't been cast in this one, but mostly because I get hit with the longing for what the French poet Villon called "les neiges d'antan" or "the snows of yesteryear." Luckily, my career has not been so huge that this has much curtailed my theatre-going. But it almost did tonight, that, and a bout of bronchitis I'm just getting over. But because my friend Kate DeWall, who was an intern what seems like just the other day and is now Master Electrician for The Public Theatre's legendary Shakespeare in the Park, invited me to tonight's closing performance of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, I said yes.
Seeing a production in Central Park normally means waiting twelve hours in all kinds of weather on a sometimes festive, sometimes furious line to obtain one of the 1600 free tickets they dispense to each performance. Sometimes, they run out before they get to you and you are rewarded with nothing for your troubles. Sometimes, you wait the twelve hours, get your ticket, and the performance is cancelled by a thunderstorm, as it was twice this week. To walk right up to the Delacorte Theatre without having waited one second and see my friend who handed me my ticket was the first delight of the evening.
When I played Benedick, I was far too young, a freshman in college in my first Shakespeare play. These many years later, and on the most beautiful evening I can recall, the air the same temperature as my skin so it seemed I was one with the night, we all were, not knowing where each of us began and the others of us ended, swimming in each other, my heart ran a slight chill, the snow that capped a realization that I am now too old to play Benedick. But the stars came out up above and down below, seated near Zachary Quinto and Lucy Liu, and the accomplished director of the show, Jack O'Brien as we were, and the most Italian production I have ever seen the few times I have of a play that takes place in Italy began like a wash of warm Tuscany, complete with tinny melodic mandolins on a spectacular set of an Italian villa lit beautifully, to perfection, with the help of my very own friend.
The cast included Broadway powerhouse performers like Brian Stokes Mitchell and John Glover. But also a lot of movie and TV personalities, including Pedro Pascal, Lily Rabe, and, playing Benedick, Hamish Linklater. In NYC it is less likely one becomes famous merely on their looks and all of these actors have the chops or at least the good guts to take on Shakespeare. And as the play unfolded, none disappointed me, many thrilled me. They bit into the text with a particularly American bent, Shakespeare, of course, transcending dialect. It wasn't until I developed a cramp that I realized my left hand was in a knot.
I didn't want to like Hamish Linklater, and at first, I'm not sure I did, a few of his flourishes ringing false to me, his bravado, unearned, I thought. It took the spasm in my arm to a let me to the fact that I was at odds with myself, that he was utterly charming me, and that it was time to let go. Of the snows.
Here we all were, nearly two thousand of my fellow New Yorkers and my friends Kate and Kayliane and Cort in a sweet spot of a clearing in the park on a perfect night, everyone pumped and psyched to see Shakespeare, all of us laughing, guffawing, groaning, rooting, cheering, even weeping for a moment or two, the sadness of a funeral, the exquisite music written for this production ringing through the trees and off Belvedere Castle in the distance, William Shakespeare, dead for centuries, had turned us all into his Groundlings at The Globe once again, his poetry dripping off the tongues of some of America's most accomplished actors and thawing in my mind the memories of my youth, hey, Hamish, I got a laugh there decades ago, my friend, ha ha, but you are wonderful, dear boy, just delightful, all of you simply delightful and near the end, during the death scene, as the little ensemble broke into a bit of my favorite verse in the entire canon, accompanied by a lushly sad tune and the words, "Pardon, Goddess, of the night, those that slew thy virgin bride," I kid you not, a shooting star burst through the sky above and my heart nearly burst out of my chest.
This is one of the reasons I live in NYC. And I regret none of it.
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