If you are inclined to self-righteousness – and, really, who isn’t? – you might be prepared to look down your nose at the various Senators, House Members and other political high rollers who gathered together to produce 2020’s Will on the Hill – or Won’t They? After all, what are they doing pretending to be Shakespearean actors when real Shakespearean actors – not to mention large swaths of other people – are scrounging around on unemployment?
The production raises money for the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s education and community engagement programs, certainly. The goal was $350,000 (they raised $400,000 and counting); where’s the remaining one to three trillion the country needs to get through the plague? Get to work, solons, you bellow. All joy and frivolity is suspended until our problems are solved!
Oddly, however, the suspension of joy and frivolity, on the legislative field and everywhere else, may explain why our problems aren’t being solved. A generation ago, Democrats and Republicans were not so far apart that they couldn’t eat together, play baseball together without getting shot, get companionably drunk together, and perform pleasant little diversions like Will on the Hill together. The next day they would hold their noses and sign off on a piece of legislation which pleases no one, has something in it to distress everyone, but somehow gets the job done.
It is not that way now so much. The Republican who dares cross over to embrace a Democrat’s bill can expect a primary challenge from someone with $2 million from the Club for Growth in his pocket. The Democrat who crosses over can expect a primary challenge from a charismatic Democratic Socialist. Since partisan redistricting has made most Districts either overwhelmingly Democratic or overwhelmingly Republican, these primary challenges represent the only threat to an incumbent. So empty gestures on behalf of losing causes trump the real mission of all legislators, which is to legislate.
Thus I continue to go to Will on the Hill, in the hope that this exercise in mutuality, brief though it is, might encourage understanding and empathy, which is, after all, the mission of theater. And if, by associating these amateur Shakespeareans with real Shakespeareans we might open eyes to the healing power of the Bard and of art in general, so much the better.
This year’s production, which Nat Cassidy scripted, was shot entirely on Zoom. This had a couple of unexpected effects. The most unexpected was that it made better actors of the Congressional members and their compatriots (such as Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform and The Hill Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack). Those of you who have tried your hand at acting (and that’s most of you, unless I miss my guess) know that the hardest part is reacting authentically; responding to what your scene partner gives you in a way which makes it look like a spontaneous utterance, not a memorized speech.
The Congressional actors have traditionally been terrible at it and doing it on streaming media would have been impossible. Cassidy and director Samantha Wyer Bello wisely did not put them to the test. Instead, they gave our Congress members parts of monologues, at which most were surpassingly good. Why shouldn’t they be? They are experienced public speakers; most have excellent diction and a firm understanding of the text. A few were outstanding; Jamie Raskin (D.-Md.) did particularly strong work; Sen. Roger Wicker (R.-Miss) did a passable English accent, and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.-D.C.) was, well, Eleanor Holmes Norton.
The other unexpected effect shouldn’t have been so unexpected. No longer requiring that actors assemble on the Harman Hall stage, the production could involve actors from all over the country. Thus the fine Michael Urie grabbed a principal role, and we were gifted with cameos from Stacy Keach, Richard Seff Award winner André De Shields, Kelley Curran, Harry Hamlin (whose acting fame stretches back to L.A. Law in the Reagan era), Franchelle Stewart Dorn, and the beloved Floyd King, who played a befuddled Senator flummoxed by technology.
Will on the Hill – or Won’t They? is a sort of metatheatrical farce, in which a beleaguered director (Christopher Michael Richardson) is attempting to get his fractious legislative charges to organize into a coherent acting company. He is hoping the acting coach (Urie) will show up; otherwise – well, there’s always Xanax™. His principal concern is a scene which Senator Smith (Holly Twyford) and Senator Jones (E. Faye Butler) are supposed to do together. They are known for their bipartisan collaborations, but Senator Smith said something unpleasant about Senator Jones on Meet the Press, and now they are enemies, thus complicating the director’s plans. (Note: there is a real Senator Smith (Tina – D.Minn) and Senator Jones (Doug- D.Ala.). These are not they.)
When Senators Smith and Jones want to say something really wretched about each other, they instruct their aides – for Senator Smith, Jessica (Felecia Curry) and for Senator Jones, Ronny (Gregory Woodell) to say it, in order to give themselves plausible deniability. But when their principals are out of the picture, it appears that Jessica and Ronny have a secret. I’ll let you guess what it is. (Hint: inspired by Shakespeare).
Then, remarkably, a clever if predictable story turns into a Master Class on Shakespeare. The acting coach shows up, and the admiring Jessica interrogates him about technique; Urie talks about soliloquies, and as he does so, other actors – not just Congressional members but De Shields and Keach and Curren – appear, delivering their interpretations of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches. Ronny, a Shakespeare skeptic, complains about obscurity and tedium in the Bard’s work; Urie (playing himself) counters with graphic descriptions of Titus Andronicus, which anticipated Sweeney Todd by four hundred years (i.e., corpus delicti being turned into corpus delicious).
Ronny, feeling left out from this Shakespearean lovefest, walks out, leaving Jessica bereft. But this being Will on the Hill, Jessica feels alienated not from Ronny but from the Bard himself. Senator Smith, an unlikely comforter, points out that Shakespeare learned from his mistakes, like Merchant of Venice. (I disagree with this judgment; I think Merchant was the most subversive play in the canon, but I acknowledge the larger point).
This, of course, has wider implications, not just for the relationship between Jessica and Ronny but for all our relationships, including the one between Senators Smith and Jones. There is a reconciliation, but, since this is America in 2020 – well, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.
In fact, as this little exercise suggests, Shakespeare saw clearly what this troubled nation and its leaders see only darkly. In the comedies – All’s Well that Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night – the warring characters discover insight, acknowledge error, forgive sins, reconcile with their foes, and live together in love, punctuated by one or more happy marriages. In the tragedies – Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and yes, Titus Andronicus the warring characters remain intransigent, bound up in righteousness, with the death of their enemies their only goal. They all die too.
W.H. Auden summed it all up more than three hundred years later:
There is no such thing as the State/ And no one exists alone. / Hunger allows no choice/ To the citizen or the police. / We must love one another or die.
Now, wouldn’t that be something for us to take from Will on the Hill!
More details on Will on the Hill 2020
Will on the Hill – or Won’t They? by Nat Cassidy. Directed by Samantha Wyer Bello . Hosted by Simon Godwin . Featuring E. Faye Butler, Felecia Curry, Christopher Michael Richardson, Holly Twyford, Gregory Woodall, Michael Urie, Maria Allard, Hon. Don Beyer (D.VA.), Hon. Andy Biggs (R.-AZ), Hon. Suzanne Bonamici (D.-Or), Hon. Brenden Boyle (D.-Pa.), Hon André Carson (D.-Ind.), Steve Clemons, Hon. Gerald Connolly (D.-Va.), Senator Chris Coons (D.-De), Margaret Coons, Kelley Curran, Bob Cusack, Hon. Ted Deutch (D.-Fl), Franchelle Stewart Dorn. Hon. Lois Frankel (D.-Fl), Harry Hamlin, Chris Jennings, Stacy Keach, Senator Angus King (I-Me), Floyd King, Ian Liddell-Grainger, MP, Hon. Carolyn Maloney (D.-NY), Bernie McKay, Hon. Carol Miller (R-W.va.), Hon. Eleanor Holmes Morton (D.-DC), Grover Norquist, Hon. Pete Olson (R.-Tex), Karishma Page, Hon. Dean Phillips (D.-Mn). Dame Karen Pierce, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States, Hon. Chellie Pingree (D-Me), Hon. Jamie Raskin (D-Md), Vin Roberti, Hon. Donna Shalala (D.-Fl), Tracie Thoms, Hon. Dina Titus (D.-Nv), Hon. Peter Welch (D-Vt) and Senator Roger Wicker (R.-Miss) . Video edited and designed by Gordon Nimmo-Smith . Produced by Shakespeare Theatre Company . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
Just wanted to say this was a great read – thanks, Tim!