To say it’s ‘Shakespeare: Speak Like a Pirate Week’ at Circa Two may seem glib but it’s as good a way as any to describe, in print, what Original Pronunciation (OP) renditions of these 400-plus year-old texts sort of sound like (zorrt arve zound loik). Not that this Crystal Clear Shakespeare presentation is in any way Pythonesque: heaven forfend!

There is a studied reverence in the way the seven highly committed and very talented alumni of Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand (SGCNZ) have approached this opportunity to work with UK actor and author Ben Crystal.

Katie Boyle, Stevie Hancox-Monk, Kieran Morris, Jimmy O’Donovan, Alexander Sparrow, Oscar James West, Maggie White and Ben Crystal himself bring an impressive fluency to their approximations of how Shakespeare’s plays sounded in his day. They have fun with it too, as happens in any well-curated anthology of Shakespearean texts. 

Without any explanatory introduction (apart from what’s written in the programme), Crystal launches straight into “Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention!” (Prologue to Henry V). When I query, afterwards, his disconcerting lack of attention to the blank verse metre, I discover it’s an attempt to emulate a karakia: a prayer for divine inspiration. Even so, I believe allowing the words to flow as written would convey the meaning and the appeal more effectively. 

The ‘Willow Song’ (Othello, IV.3) book-ends the showcase. Gender-blind casting of who speaks the soliloquies, scenes and sonnets places the attention firmly on the texts. We are given no hint as to the provenance of each selection so much of our attention is devoted to trying to work out who is speaking to whom in which play or sonnet. My identification of them below is thanks to my note-taking and the efficacy of Google searches.

While a scene from The Taming of the Shrew (IV.5) conveys little of the psychological mind-game Petruchio is playing on Katherine, as the evening progresses characterisation, purpose and, therefore, meaning do seep into the renditions. Meanwhile a range of sonnets attune our ears to ye olde way of speaking.

Sonnet 19 tells Time to do his worst: “… despite thy wrong, / My love shall in my verse ever live young.” Sonnet 31 celebrates how the dead live on in a loving heart. Conversely, it seems, Sonnet 130 compares unfavourably a loved-one’s qualities to others, before declaring such comparisons to indeed be odious.

Sonnet 3 argues the importance of having children; Sonnet 131 gives us “I am what I am” while observing how people see their own faults in others; Sonnet 64 finds fear of loss in the inevitability of decay, destruction and death.

Excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays enliven proceedings somewhat. We are treated to the way Viola’s Cesario (Stevie) inadvertently seduces Olivia (Jimmy) in Twelfth Night (I.5). The robust tones of OP suit this scene admirably.

It is a surprise to suddenly hear Portia (Katie) deliver “The quality of mercy is not strained” – from The Merchant of Venice (IV.1) – in Received Pronunciation (RP), a.k.a. standard English. When it’s repeated in OP it’s more like a barmaid is regaling us with her wisdom, which does make it more lively. The same juxtaposition is offered from Henry IV Part 1 (I.2), when Prince Henry (Jimmy) tells us he’ll feign a loose disposition, the better to impress when, like the sun, he shines again.  

The high stakes scene from Much Ado about Nothing (IV.1), where Beatrice (Katie) and Benedict (Ben) admit they love each other, only to have Beatrice test his love by asking him to “kill Claudio”, is as powerful, here, as it should be. Sonnet 29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,/ I all alone beweep my outcast state”) offers a different perspective on the power of love.

Comic relief comes from Two Gentlemen of Verona (II.3), with Alexander and Oscar sharing Launce’s bewailing of his dog’s failure to be as upset as him and all his family at his leaving home … Then Alexander’s Iago undercuts the levity by revealing his hatred of the Moor (Othello, I.3).

More gross injustice is dramatised in The Winter’s Tale (III.2) when Hermione (Maggie) responds to Leontes’ paranoid accusations. Sonnet 73 offers salutary advice on ageing before a tone of resolution (or is it?) is struck between Aufidius (Kieran) and Coriolanus (Alexander) (Coriolanus, IV, 5).

And so we come to the fatal closet scene where Desdemona and Emilia – then the company – reprise the portentous ‘Willow Song’ …  

It is an absorbing anthology, well delivered except for the odd times when voices are too soft to contend with the air conditioner’s hum. And it’s a work in progress: they continue to explore, each afternoon, so each performance in the short sold-out season is bound to differ.

What we are left with, then, is the ‘why bother with OP?’ question: why go to all this effort to recreate Original Pronunciation in the 21^st century?

I share the view that the way to honour the original principles of Shakespeare’s company – of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and The King’s Men – is to speak in your own voice and wear modern dress. We have long since moved on from believing The Bard’s words can only be properly articulated through RADA-style elocution – although I suppose that tradition has taken longer to fade in the UK than here. Even so, didn’t Albert Finney’s Hamlet and Tom Courtenay’s Romeo break the mould 60-something years ago, albeit in their own Northern accents?  

It does seem perverse that this Crystal Clear exercise requires actors to be trained into a voice other than theirs in order to emulate the ‘naturalness’ of the original players. That this SGCNZ troupe achieves it without it sounding forced is testament to their skills.  

Given the relaxed and grounded way they deliver the texts, it is reassuring, I suppose, to witness this proof that the way most Shakespeare plays are produced these days is closer to what Will and co did originally than what some of us grew up with and were trained in.

For the full rundown of Ben Crystal events, click here.

Meanwhile Wellington is abuzz with this year’s SGCNZ National University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival, at the Michael Fowler Centre this Friday and Saturday, followed by a public performances by 2017 SGCNZ Young Shakespeare Company at the Opera House on Sunday evening – details here. 

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