Daniel Vigilante
Sandra 1
Michael ItaliaTheatre: Venus and Adonis
Beckett Theatre - until May 4
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Adapting Shakespeare to the stage is a difficult task. There are many areas in which to go devastatingly wrong. Yet the task is made all the more harder when the adaptation is not made from a set-out play with notes and instructions, but rather from a poem of, let’s say, timeless literary merit. But that’s exactly what this groundbreaking collaboration between the Malthouse Theatre and Bell Shakespeare attempts, and the result is a startling and moving depiction of desire, rejection and the inextricable pain bound with love.
Director Marion Potts delves into the relationship of performer/audience with an audacious address to the audience that at first is confronting, then enticing, before becoming an all out flirt. A lascivious plea for “thee to be a deer inside my park” certainly exhibits the bawdiness of our dear William, and it’s almost disappointing (if slightly perverted) to learn that the invitation is not, of course, for us, but for the unseen Adonis. But none of Venus’ pleas arouse desire in Adonis and the love goes unrequited. Even salacious directives to “Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry/Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie” fall flat and simply frustrate our heroine, leaving her in despair and rouse a godly revenge.
Melissa Madden Grey and Susan Prior both play Venus, each to a fantastic and energetic effect. Prior’s beautiful voice is like music to listen to. Then she actually sings! Well... It’s like petals falling on your face; so delicate and pleasing, and yet made all the more special by Grey’s complementary harmonies.
A haunting chant of “She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not loved” sets a melancholy mood for the latter half of the show where the prose becomes sorrowful and reflective.
If the tears in my companion’s eyes and the accompanying (solo, unabashed) standing ovation are anything to measure against, then we can assume that even the less sensitive will gain something positively human about this performance.
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Melissa Madden Grey and Susan Prior both play Venus, each to a fantastic and energetic effect. Prior’s beautiful voice is like music to listen to. Then she actually sings! Well... It’s like petals falling on your face; so delicate and pleasing, and yet made all the more special by Grey’s complementary harmonies.
