the trip of a lifetime

When I was 23, I promised myself that I would see all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays performed live. Fulfilling this promise has taken me to eight states and three foreign countries so far, and since I still have four more to go, these statistics may change.

I didn’t see my first Shakespeare play until I was a junior in high school. This experience was due to a wonderful English teacher named Miss Wyman, an inspired and enthusiastic educator. She arranged an evening field trip to Catholic University in Washington, D.C., so that we could see “The Merchant of Venice” performed.

It enthralled me, and I can still picture — 65 years later — Portia downstage left delivering her “quality of mercy” speech! From that time on I was stage-struck.

I actually made my promise seven years later on a trip to Europe that I thought would be my only one. My husband and I saved for two years for those three weeks, which included five days in England.

Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, was, of course, top of my list of sights, and we were lucky enough to be there while Peter Hall’s famous production of “Hamlet,” starring David Warner, was playing.

Then and there, I started my chase.

Without Google, it was difficult to find productions anywhere besides locally, so I resorted to TV programs and movies, not live, but better than no Shakespeare at all.

Twenty-five years passed. Life intervened — kids, mortgages, two overseas assignments.  No Shakespeare. I almost forgot my promise.

But, in 1990, our younger son, Bryan, enrolled as a theater major at Otterbein University and got his first starring role as Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing.” Naturally, we traveled to Ohio to see him perform.

His performance also reminded me of my goal. Now that I had checked another play off my list, I started looking for more opportunities to do so, even if they were distant productions. My promise resurfaced, and  I have been busy ever since.

Venues have varied. I have watched plays in parks, college campus theaters, blocked off streets, taverns and once by a lake. Most productions adapted to their settings, and a few were even enhanced.

“Comedy of Errors” has a confusing plot involving two sets of twins and numerous  mistaken identities. Reading it takes great concentration, and seeing it needs attentive listening. But staged on the shore of Lake Tahoe and updated to 1960’s Rio de Janeiro during Carnival it was easier to sort out which twin was on stage, and which had just left. “The Girl from Ipanema” tune served as a transition theme and signaled that a new pair of mismatched twins were about to misunderstand each other.

This modernization worked for me even though I prefer my Shakespeare with an Elizabethan atmosphere. But “Richard II” was disastrous! Presented at Canada’s Stratford Festival soon after the pandemic restrictions were lifted, it was set in disco-era New York. Richard even had a hot tub!

The pounding beat, the costumes that seemed to be masses of white ruffles and the adapted dialogue did nothing to convey the Plantagenet story, was Shakespeare’s main reason for writing his history plays. It was not my King Richard, or Shakespeare’s, or — as far as I have researched — history’s. This one is still on my to see list.

An interesting “Richard III” was presented in the Barstow-Pell Mansion in the Bronx, N.Y., using different rooms for scene changes. The audience was moved, not the scenery. In this way, a small troupe of actors played dozens of parts without changing costumes by adding accessories to their neutral wardrobe as they progressed from room to room.

More traditional productions I’ve seen are memorable in different ways. I saw “MacBeth” in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in Slovene, of course. Because I knew the play so well, and also because I had been using drama in the high school classes I had been teaching, I was able to concentrate on things actors did, rather than what they said.

Hence, I noticed changes in voice tone, emphasis of words, gestures and facial expressions, and reactions of other actors to the speaker. I was surprisingly emotional, especially when Lady MacBeth gave her final speech crouched over a red pool of light downstage right. I now realize why people go to the same play more than once. There are many ways of “seeing.”

One of my favorite and most moving memories is of the play “Cymbeline” — not really because of the play itself, or the production or even the theater, which was the reconstructed Globe in London — but because of the time and situation in which I found myself.

I was returning from an eight-year stretch in Slovenia and had arranged for some family members to meet me in England where I had friends to visit. One of our planned activities was to see Shakespeare at the Globe.

Our tickets were for mid-September, 2001!

As the Twin Towers crumbled in flames on 9/11 and all travel paused, I found myself stranded in England. Fortunately, my friends and all of Britain rallied. Wherever I went, when people heard my American accent, they came over to express concern and support.

Theater did not shut down, however. Just the airports and international travel. So I still had six tickets to “Cymbeline” and no one to use them. I managed to sell two. I ate one. And friends from Derbyshire made the trip south to London to go with me.

The open-air theater was nearly empty and eerily quiet. At first, we wondered why, but then we realized that there were no airplanes landing or taking off from Heathrow Airport. The audience, such as it was, was quiet also, no rowdy groundlings to be seen. We felt as if we were attending a personal command performance.

At one point in Act III, the wronged wife character has a short soliloquy, and the actress playing Imogen sat on the edge of the stage to deliver it. There were no groundlings to interact with, so she began in a kind of vacuum. But suddenly a seagull flew in and perched on the stage edge next to her. She turned and spoke to the bird, which remained there with a cocked head as if listening to and considering her words.

It was a magic moment and never would have happened had there been air traffic. Even now, I can hear the silence surrounding the speech and see the clear bright blue of the sky overhead.

Twenty years later, I am still on the trail. With only four more plays to go, I feel sure that I will accomplish my goal. Unfortunately, three (including “Richard II”) are history plays seldom staged in the United States.

It has literally been the trip of a lifetime!

Sue Brems lives in Wyomissing, Berks County.