The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare Page A

like
Carousel
than Shakespeare; the leading characters each took their turn on the apron stage, trying to break down the fourth wall and buttonhole the audience; and Peter Hall tried nearly every trick in the book to relieve the monotony of very early Shakespeare. But it’s heavy going: the plot and development are conventional and the verse monotonous. Yet I’m not at all sure that the play’s longueurs are as inevitable as he makes them seem. 31
    Despite Hall’s many “advantages as a Shakespearean director,” understanding of the play and “respect for the language as poetry” and the ability “to force a high standard of verse-speaking on his cast,” Alvarez claimed that
    he has a vice: he is a sucker for a pretty scene; and in Renzo Mongiardino he has a designer all too able to pander to him. The stage was so littered with ivied ruins and bits of decaying gilded interiors that it looked like an opulent, tinted Piranesi. Pretty enough in itself … yet it contrived to make an immature play seem altogether decadent. 32
    Subsequent productions have eschewed attempts at Renaissance picturesqueness, locating the play in twentieth-century sets and costumes, seeking modern resonances for the play’s
jejeune
qualities. For Robin Phillips’ 1970 production, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was updated to a 1960s lido with beachwear, sunglasses, and onstage swimming pool. Daphne Dare’s set consisted of “a ramp and steps from mid-stage left and a small pool downstage right. The forest was created by the dropping of a single batten of ropes from the flies and a dappling of the light.” 33 The play opened with a recording of “Who is Sylvia? Who is Valentine? Who is Proteus? Who is Julia?” and closed with the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” B. A. Young argued that the choice of setting was logical: “Courts being out of fashion in the 20th century, Mr Phillips has sent his young people to a Milanese university where their behaviour fits in very suitably.” 34 Gareth Lloyd Evans believed that “for all the many visual and thematic inconsistencies induced by such a treatment, it seemed to me to have been done in a spirit of affection rather than disdain of this immature play.” 35

    3. Peter Hall’s 1960 production with Lucetta (Mavis Edwards, behind) teasing Julia (Frances Cuka) about her letter, Act 1 Scene 2: “The stage was so littered with ivied ruins and bits of decaying gilded interiors that it looked like an opulent, tinted Piranesi … it contrived to make an immature play seem altogether decadent.”
    John Barton’s 1981 production paired Shakespeare’s earliest comedy with his earliest tragedy in a double bill with
Titus Andronicus
. It was a brave experiment that employed a conscious meta-theatricality in its cross-casting and onstage audience. Both plays were severely cut—850 lines from
Titus
and 515 from
Two Gentlemen
. It confused and divided critics. Roger Warren was the most perceptive in his understanding of how the two plays worked together:
    Mr Barton’s interpretation of
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
must be considered in relation to his treatment of
Titus Andronicus
, which preceded it in a double-bill at Stratford.
    The acting area was reduced to a very confined space at the front of the stage, surrounded by racks containing costumes, weapons, and props, and by the hobby-horses used by the Goths in
Titus
and by Silvia, Eglamour and Thurio in their flight to the forest in
Two Gentlemen
. Patrick Stewart (Titus) announced the play’s title and read the opening stage directions. The actors visibly assumed their characterizations before entries and switched them off again once they were out of the acting area; they watched scenes they were not in, and often provided sound effects, such as birdsong for the various forest scenes. Perhaps surprisingly, this artifice did not on the whole rob the events of conviction. Sometimes the actors’ presence distracted, as when the