Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "cinema"

Sandscript on Shakespeare

Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday and it is also four hundred years since his death. The centenary is being celebrated in many places and in many ways. His words have been absorbed into most people’s lives, often without them realising. My many moments with Shakespeare on both sides of the world do not alas consist of watching our great actors live in classic stage performances, or hours spent reading and memorising sonnets. My mother never forgot her teacher who ‘brought The Bard to life’ by having the girls get up and act all the parts; my experience was more prosaic.
At my high school in Perth, Western Australia, dryly reading through Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice in a hot classroom, The Bard was reduced to total tedium; hardly William’s fault, he wrote his plays to be acted in front of lively audiences, words of wisdom interspersed with sword fights or humour to keep their attention. As a cynical teenager who spent most of my time giggling with my best friend Marjorie, the school’s attempts to bring us culture were doomed to fail.
One day a company, or more likely a group of amateurs, arrived to present scenes from Julius Caesar. We had no hall, just a quadrangle with a concrete stage, but at least Perth’s Mediterranean climate was appropriate for a Roman story. My only memory is of helpless giggling as Caesar carried on breathing after his violent death, his white robes unstained. I guess we would only have been satisfied with real blood.
Another time, the school was bussed to a suburban hall where some real English actors were presenting scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. My only recollection from that day is the interval, when one of the actors came to the front of the stage to tell us we were the rudest, most badly behaved audience they had ever played before. I cannot take full credit for this, I am sure I was loyally listening and watching. You will not be surprised to learn that our school had a bad reputation.
Later on in top year, our new and enthusiastic literature teacher arranged for his classes to attend a production of Othello and endured an evening of chronic embarrassment. We were reduced to tears of helpless laughter from the moment a puny chap covered in black boot polish walked on as Othello, until Desdemona breathed her last, curling her legs up and clinging onto a bed much too small for a death scene.
But before we left school the world of Shakespeare was brought to life with the arrival at the cinema of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, played by real teenagers like us; though obviously Olivia Hussey’s Juliet was more beautiful than my pimply, gauche fifteen year old self.
Before my return to This Sceptred Isle I acted in my first and only Shakespeare role. In a wheat belt country town there were only three things to do in your leisure time, drink, play football or netball, join the local dramatic society. The Old Time Music Hall production was an eclectic mix and included the witches' scene from Macbeth. I played a witch. ‘Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble…’ is all I remember.
Films over many decades and now television productions, give everyone a chance to enjoy Shakespeare’s stories and words. Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ burst onto the screen full of colour, comedy and life, a film all the family could enjoy.
In recent years entertainment has come full circle; live theatre is broadcast live to cinemas. Kenneth Branagh’s 2013 Macbeth was produced in a small church for Manchester International Festival, tickets sold out within minutes. We went to see it at the Regent Centre, Christchurch, a lovely rescued Art Deco cinema; but however good the live relay, I’m sure the smell from the mud and straw strewn aisle of the church and the chance of having your ear chopped off as swords swung perilously close during the battle scenes, made the experience more real for the audience in the church.
Shakespeare is always open to interpretation and time travel; we loved a live production in London of Two Gentlemen of Verona set in the 1930’s, with a grand piano and songs from that era.
Finally we made it to Stratford Upon Avon and saw ‘As You Like It’ in the intimate wooden galleried Swan Theatre. As we sat down we were asked to keep bags, coats and feet out of the narrow aisles so as not to trip the actors.
2016 will be filled with Shakespeare of all sorts and I shall be looking forward to the second trilogy in the BBC Hollow Crown series starring some of our favourite actors.

Diverting us from matters of World importance, such as ongoing genocide and the survival of the planet itself, we on either side of the Atlantic have been subjected to endless news items about Harvey Weinstein. Without belittling the suffering of women who experienced serious assaults, there has been a jumping on the bandwagon of unprecedented proportions. People in show business on both sides of the ocean have expressed utter disbelief, shock and righteous indignation when most of them surely knew about him for years. Others in various public walks of life are innocent of hiding the truth because they know absolutely nothing about or anybody in the film world; so what right do they have to express an opinion?
Meanwhile we can all jump on the bandwagon; that is every woman on the planet plus chaps who have been the object of unwarranted attention from women or gay men, just type in ‘Me Too’ somewhere on line.
I know a doctor who worked in a sexual assault referral centre; date rape really happens, people you thought you knew well harm you, but fortunately for most of us ‘sexual harassment’ has been of the laugh about it with your friends variety and the total pathos of the men involved. We probably did not even realise we were supposed to ‘speak up’, first dates or the work place can pose threats to the unwary.
On my first school summer holiday job at Joe’s shop I lied about my age, I was 14 not 15 like my friend, but both of us were warned by one of the older ladies to be wary when Joe’s old dad was around ‘Don’t bend over or he’ll look up your skirt!’. If you are expecting a salacious tale of what happened in the stock room – nothing, the six weeks passed without incident.
A real incident did occur when I was about thirteen; school holidays and a day time visit to the cinema to see a Disney film with my younger and more naive friend and her younger sister. Full house, we could only get two seats together and one separate, so I naturally volunteered for the lone seat. I was not enjoying the outing stuck by myself, but worse was to come when the man next to me put his hand on my knee; that was all, but I knew it should not be happening. What to do? If I got up and left my seat, then what and how to explain to my innocent friends was my main worry. Luckily the man got up and left... but what was he doing at a children’s film by himself?
Legs seem to have featured in my teen years. Dad taught me to drive when I was seventeen, on the understanding I had a few lessons to polish up for the test. My first instructor was a woman, a real bitch too. At this point I should mention that I have never been of the opinion ‘all men are beasts’ and with a good father, brother, husband and sons why would I be? What has been forgotten in all the fervent discussion lately is that many girls and women prefer men teachers and men bosses, they are often much nicer and do not pierce your confidence with the icicle of bitchiness. Back to the driving lessons; I decided to change instructors, no more women. The new chap was old with brown teeth, nicotined hands and the inevitable stale tobacco smell, but he was a patient teacher. Arriving back in the driveway of my house after the first lesson he squeezed my knee and chuckled ‘Janet in her mini skirt.’ It never occurred to me to complain, I just never wore a mini skirt again and he never touched me inappropriately again.
‘Always wear trousers to the Drive-In’ we teenagers warned each other in Perth, Western Australia. I believe there is only one drive in cinema left there now, they were ideal for families and couples, but dicey for first dates.
But it wasn’t until I was on a train out of Waterloo one night long ago that I experienced my first indecent exposure. My friend and I had been to the cinema after work, separating only when it was time to get on our different trains. Sitting in a compartment reading my book I had a feeling all was not well and looked up to see the bizarre sight of an old chap with a walking stick exposing himself; and it was pretty pathetic. I quickly moved to another compartment. It was hardly a drama, but I still wondered what I would do in the unlikely event he got off at the same lonely station. I could run up the steps and elude him, but I had this image of myself pushing him back down the very long flight of concrete stairs to his death... I never saw him again, told the relatives I was staying with, uncle threatening to kill him, but none of us thought of actually reporting it to the police.
My college friend who was well endowed, but a respectable Christian girl, complained that men assumed moral character or lack of it corresponded with the size of one’s breasts. Perhaps not looking like a sex siren and having neither the looks or desire to be a model or film star helped me steer clear of more serious sexual harassment, verbal or physical, but I think it would be rare to find a girl or woman who hasn’t experienced something that made her feel uncomfortable.
Will women’s lives always be spent on the alert? Where or when you can walk alone, which bloke on the bus or tube looks a bit creepy? Our state of constant alert has been superceded only by modern terrorism when we are more worried that the bloke opposite us is going to blow himself up.
But to end on a positive note, how about all the men out there who are not actually waiting for your car to break down so they can rape you, who go to work to earn a living and enjoy nothing but camaraderie with their colleagues.
When I was twenty, I once ran out of petrol on a pretty deserted Australian country road; brought up on the idea that if you didn’t take money out with you, it wouldn’t get spent, I had no money on me. Obviously the no money theory was a pretty stupid idea for some circumstances. But a nice young man on his way to a pop festival, fetched petrol, paid for it and I took him back to my landlady’s for dinner. Landlady and her family were't too impressed with the episode. All sorts of things could have happened, but nothing untoward did. How many of us have been out and about with people we don’t know to strange places and all has been well, first dates where you have been bored out of your mind, but safe.
Commentators on Harveygate have claimed this is a watershed moment, let’s hope it is, but without work and social life turning into a bland world where men and women hardly dare talk to each other.