Royal Shakeshafte Company!
Ronnie Mulryne reviews Shakeshafte by Trinity Players, Holy Trinity Church, Saturday, 5th November
IT was fitting that Rowan Williams’ new play was timed for its English premiere in the days leading up to the commemoration of the attempted atrocity associated with Guy Fawkes, that it was performed to the distant sound of exploding fireworks, and that the performance took place in a church full of memories of the turbulent religious era that saw the demise of the old religion of Catholicism and the difficult birth of a Protestant faith.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury evokes those troubled times quite brilliantly by appropriating a speculative tale about young Will Shakespeare — or Shakeshafte — travelling to Hoghton Tower in Lancashire to engage with entertainments for the resident Catholic family. Crucially — the word is appropriate on several levels — his short residency coincides with a visit by the great Jesuit missionary, Edmund Campion, risking a cruel death at the hands of a nervous state.
This is a rich gem of a play, superbly performed by the Trinity Players under the inspired direction of Ursula Russell. Among lived-in characterisations were Graham Wilcox’s Alexander Hoghton, slowly dying like England’s Catholic faith, his younger brother, Thomas (Chris Cornford), Wayne Bartlett as a young visitor, and the overbearing, avaricious Ruthie Copeman as the illegitimate Protestant Meg Critchlow. Mark Spriggs was a rugged steward and Cecilia Kendall White a troubled maidservant, enmeshed in the physical and intellectual attractions of brilliant Will Shakeshafte.
At the core of everything were the utterly-compelling confrontations between Campion (Tim Raistrick) and Shakeshafte (Louis Osborne), with the Jesuit defending the fixed certainties of an established faith, and the emergent playwright seeking truth in individual experience.
The play was beautifully set with simple stage furniture in front of one of Holy Trinity’s stone arches, closed off by a red backdrop, with period costumes and with atmosphere conjured up by Elizabethan vocal and instrumental music played by a small consort and sung by members of the cast.
