Bill Cain’s play is an accomplished piece of, shall we call it, imagined history. We know that William Shakespeare (however he really spelled his name) spun his plays (especially this histories) to suit the times: the last of the Tudors, the first of the English Stuarts, the unresolved religious conflicts. Cain asks, what if Shakespeare were more directly involved in contemporary political events than the annals of 400 years have revealed? What if a royal commission, objectified on stage by a red sack of money that is tossed from player to player like someone’s still-beating heart, overlay a complex political conspiracy and counter-conspiracy? His answer is an intriguing piece of theater with a wide sweep of echoes and allusions, ranging from The Parallax View by Alan Pakula, to The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard, to Shakespeare’s own Murder of Gonzago and Porter scene.
Indeed, the script is full of nuggets that tickle the fancies of the Shakespearean aficionados among us. It’s a little surprising that this production, a remount of the 2009 Oregon Shakespeare Festival premiere, is presented on Maine Avenue rather than father north along Seventh Street. The ensemble cast has had the time to fine-tune some wonderful characterizations, first among them Jonathan Haugen’s gimpy-legged government official, Robert Cecil. A powerful man, used to getting his way, Cecil can silence objections with nothing more than a “sst.” Richard Elmore’s irascible Richard Burbage and John Tufts’ comic turn as James VI/I are also quite fine.
As the play slips back and forth through flashback and theatrical “reconstruction” of the same events, one of the characters directly asks us, “A ‘true history.’ How could there be anything true about a play?” Cain’s answer may lie in my favorite definition of a myth: not a word of it is true, and every word of it is true. Perhaps the same can be said both of Cain’s piece and the historical record of the events that sparked it, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
- Equivocation, by Bill Cain, directed by Bill Rauch, Arena Stage Kreeger Theatre, Washington
