Monthly Archives: February 2015

Deliver Us From Eva, Program Notes

Here you can find the program notes for last week’s screening of Deliver Us From Eva.

deliver us from eva poster

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

Although we are accustomed to thinking of Shakespeare as the author of The Taming of the Shrew, this title is first formally established in reference to an anonymous play entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1594. The Stationers’ Register comprises the records maintained by the Stationers’ Company of London, which was a guild which has operated under royal charter since 1557 to regulate practices within the book trade, from printing to bookbinding and bookselling, and in this case it alerts us to what appears to be the first printing of a ‘bad’ quarto version of Shakespeare’s play, probably reconstructed from memory by actors of The Taming of the Shrew. The date of The Taming of the Shrew is a complex question, as there are only scant records about early performances, including a reference again from 1594 to a play called ‘The Tamynge of A Shrowe’ in Philip Henslowe’s Diary which was intriguingly played in the same week as Andronicus which may well have been another early Shakespearean work, Titus Andronicus. However, whilst the first known official attribution of The Taming of the Shrew to Shakespeare comes to us through the First Folio of 1623, the combination of printed and manuscript archival records strongly suggest that this is one of his earliest dramatic creations, and scholarly consensus currently points to a composition date between 1590 and 1591.

            As one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, it is interesting that The Taming of the Shrew draws extensively upon Renaissance comedic pop culture for its narrative: although very few direct sources have been identified for the play’s main characters, the forthright and unforgiving Katherina and her would-be suitor Petruchio, the idea of woman-as-shrew, or scold, was a stock subject for jestbooks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The ‘scolding of a shrew’ is listed as one of the ‘six ill sounds’ of the world in a joke book in the mid-seventeenth century, the Merry Drollery of 1661 offers guidelines on ‘how to choose a shrew’ in its ‘Advice to Bachelors’, whilst in 1693 a ‘merry Poet’ recalls a tale in which a ‘newly married man’ offers his ‘shrewd wife’ as the best form of torture to punish a wolf who has been ravaging local villagers. Along with Shakespeare’s own Katherina, these examples represent an intriguing combination of deep-rooted misogyny with humor in a way which can be deeply unsettling to modern audiences. It is worth considering the fact that in Richard II in 1597 Shakespeare uses the adjective ‘shrewd’ to indicate the danger of a very sharp sword, and for modern spectators, the shrew may yet be able to transform from a standing joke into a cunning and worthy opponent for her male detractors.

Deliver Us From Eva directed by Gary Hardwick (2003)

In this adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, Eva Dandridge (Gabrielle Union) is a Los Angeles Health Inspector whose career attributes of perfectionism, directness, and bouts of officiousness are not well-received when she applies them at home to minister to the personal lives of her three sisters. Each of the three younger sisters’ plans are thwarted by Eva’s interference, and by reconfiguring Shakespeare’s sisterly dynamic between Katherina and Bianca in relation not only to Eva’s personal qualities but also her professional life, Hardwick’s film begins to elucidate a slightly different picture of the modern-day shrew than that put forth on the early modern stage. For although Eva is, in her own words, ‘uncompromising’ and ‘wear[s] it as a badge of honor’, she is true to her word when she states of ‘principle’ that ‘maybe the world is in short supply, but I am not’. Indeed, Eva takes the concept of the early modern shrew and uses it to launch a stinging attack in a battle of the sexes as she describes ‘women who aspire to culture, and men who aspire to scratch themselves’. In keeping with the source material, Eva hits so hard with her sweeping critique of all men that her words venture into misandry, but as director Hardwick has stated, she emerges as a ‘turbo-feminist’. As in Shakespeare’s play, a potential suitor is recruited for Eva, the ‘Master Player’, Ray Adams (LL Cool J), who is paid by Eva’s three brothers-in-law to distract, seduce, and then dump her. The brothers-in-law hope that Ray will be a sufficient diversion to stop Eva from interfering with their lives. However, after a rocky beginning, it is Eva’s very resolve and intelligence which seduce Ray, and when their relationship blossoms the brothers-in-law find that the newly-content shrew poses an even greater problem than she did before.

            Deliver Us From Eva is an African-American Shakespearean film adaptation, and Hardwick stated that one of his greatest motivations in making the movie was ‘to see Eva on screen. [He had] never seen a woman, much less a black woman, like her in a movie’, and in Eva’s sharp-tongued, witty exchanges the shrew appears less and less like an irritating scold and more and more like an empowered hyper-achiever. Indeed, not only is Eva herself a powerful female character, but her three sisters, Kareenah (Essence Atkins), Bethany (Robinne Lee), and Jacqui (Meagan Good) are likewise outspoken and forthright, allowing this adaptation to suggest that a modern incarnation of shrewishness may actually be more shrewd than shrew.

Dr. Emma Annette Wilson

Reviews of ASC’s Tour, Method in Madness

The American Shakespeare Center’s 2014/2015 tour Method in Madness is coming to the University of Alabama on Sunday, March 1st to perform Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Details are here. Some of our graduate students recently attended Method in Madness shows in Birmingham, and I want to share their impressions of the great work ASC is doing.

"American Shakespeare Center --June 2014 -- This photograph is licensed to American Shakespeare Center for its advertising and marketing purposes. Other uses, or use of this photograph by third parties, without consent of the photographer, are prohibited."
Patrick Earl as Benedick and Stephanie Holladay Earl as Beatrice in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Photo by Michael Bailey.

ASC’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Cumberland School of Law, 2/14/15

The American Shakespeare Center’s touring production of Much Ado About Nothing hoists the audience out of Shakespeare’s Messina and drops us, bell-bottoms and all, at a disco somewhere between Love Boat and An Officer and a Gentleman.

Here we witness the “merry war” between Beatrice and Benedick set to a soundtrack of brass and bravura. The accompanying spectacle is fully of heady effusiveness. In suitably irreverent style, the cast takes up the revelry of Shakespeare’s language and recontextualizes it with a little glitz and a lot of guts. What we end up with is a celebration of Shakespeare’s playfulness—the ASC’s Much Ado is a touch campy and a dash cartoonish, and the actors embody this conceit with aplomb.

Stephanie Holladay Earl’s Beatrice is by turns acerbic and sassy. Without sacrificing any of the character’s assertiveness, she balances Beatrice’s defiance of early modern social norms with a tenacious sense of humor. Her performance, ultimately, is both engaging and charming.

As Benedick, Patrick Earl tempers swagger with a boyishness that emerges into maturity as the play progresses. He plays the commitment-phobic soldier with hyperbolic bravado, and through the transition from lothario to lover, Earl’s Benedick remains eminently likeable.

Doubling abounds in this cast, and the actors rise to the task with impressive versatility. Susie Parr effervesces as Hero, while Andrew Goldwasser and Stephen Brunson are riotous as Dogberry and Balthazar, respectively.

This reimagining of Much Ado owes much of its success to its distinctly twenty-first century comic delivery. In a Messina of powder blue suits, Gilligan’s Island slapstick and KISS-themed masquerades, it’s the counterbalance of fond nostalgia and optimistic silliness that gives the ASC’s production its (considerable) charisma.

~Chris Emslie

Andrew Goldwasser as Faustus in DOCTOR FAUSTUS. Photo by Michael Bailey.
Andrew Goldwasser as Faustus in DOCTOR FAUSTUS. Photo by Michael Bailey.

ASC’s Doctor Faustus at the Cumberland School of Law, 2/14/15

Though Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is probably the most well-known Elizabethan play outside of Shakespeare, the drama is not often performed by modern theatre companies. Staging the battle for its protagonist’s eternal soul, the play asks significant questions about heaven and hell, fate and free will, knowledge and power. These questions were addressed cleverly, and in many cases effectively, by the American Shakespeare Center’s production of Doctor Faustus as part of their Method in Madness tour. The company tackled a difficult and ambitious text yet managed to produce a play was both entertaining and thought-provoking.

By following the “basic principles of Renaissance theatrical production”, the ASC ensures that the strength of its offerings lies primarily in the performances of its actors—and the actors in Doctor Faustus did not disappoint. Andrew Goldwasser delivered a magnetic performance as the titular doctor who, seduced by the promises of necromancy, sells his soul to Lucifer for twenty-four years of all the knowledge and power he could desire. Stephanie Holladay Earl played his devilish companion Mephistopheles with the perfect balance of charm and control, wit and wickedness. By interacting with the crowd throughout the play, Earl, Goldwasser, and the other actors quickly pulled the audience into the production, making them complicit in Faustus’s “hellish fall.” A second strength of this particular production was the sophistication of its visual effects, despite the restrictions of the company’s limited touring equipment. These effects were especially apt in conveying the horrors of hell: the use of fire in the production was both dramatic and impressive, and the movement of faceless devils, twisting and contorting in brown body suits, was surprisingly eerie and effective. Comprised of nuanced performances and stunning visual effects, the ASC’s Doctor Faustus was a compelling production of Marlowe’s most enduring tragedy.

~Emily Pitts Donahoe

You can find photos of ASC’s recent shows (and food truck experiences!) at their Tumblr. As always, if you have any questions about our upcoming events, feel free to contact Nic Helms via wordpress or at nrhelms at crimson.ua.edu.