I attended a free performance of Othello on the Boston Common last night. For the uninitiated, Othello is about jealousy, betrayal, manipulation, and handkerchiefs. But it's mainly just about handkerchiefs. It puts the tragic in tragedy. Its human themes never age, so more than 400 years after its debut it still has a here-and-now feel. Maybe they will be saying the same thing about "Rent" four centuries from now. Maybe not. Speaking of "Rent," since this is Boston, Cassio and Iago partake in a homoerotic embrace (one playgoer claims to have spotted a kiss) in this version. This, I suspect, is to show visitors how much more tolerant and modern Boston is than their hometown--and to demonstrate that Shakespeare can be improved upon by Bostonians. It is the hub of the universe, after all.
But enough about the play. Everybody comes to see the groundlings. My first close encounter involved a groundling who approached me as I exited Park Street Station (undergroundlings deserve a whole other post) and approached the play site. She was quite an actress, with a pained face and a scripted pitch. A chemically intoxicated person masquerading as a victim of misfortune, she played a woman much older than her birth certificate indicated. As she began her story of woe, I nodded my head, gave her a low-key "stop" signal with my right hand, and wished her good night. "But you don't even know what I was going to say?" she could be heard mumbling as we passed. Ah, but I did.
Trekking into Boston for a play, I got a political rally instead. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Boston Mayor Tom Menino, and Red Sox owner John Henry--along with a cast of flunkeys--took the stage at the play's scheduled start time. Shakespeare is long for modern tastes as it stands; the groundlings didn't need the longwinded to elongate the evening any further. The politicians and foundation whores flattered the audience with talk of Massachusetts being the most enlightened and tolerant place in the world. I thought the self-flattery ironic: on the very grounds where we watched the play, our Massachusetts forebears executed four Quakers for their thought crimes. But it's Massachusetts, and if we say we have a history of tolerance and enlightenment, then it is so.
The governor and the mayor showing up in support of the players and crew didn't bother me in the least. It seemed appropriate, laudable even. But that's not why they showed up. One of their flunkeys, a philanthropic leader of some sort who gave off an Imaginarium-of-Dr.-Parnassus-Heath-Ledger vibe, transformed the remarks into a pep rally for Deval Patrick's reelection campaign. I objected--vocally. Reminding the audience that Patrick was running for reelection on a platform for the arts (good luck on that platform in Lowell and Holyoke), the groundlings applauded enthusiastically. I booed. I am no boo-bird, but the notion of hijacking a theatrical performance with a campaign spiel struck me as so crass that I needed to express disapproval. Although one man's claps get lost in the din of all the other claps, one man's "boo" is clearly audible above the claps of thousands. I wasn't the least bit embarrassed by the stares of the other groundlings. I like to think that Deval Patrick's flunkey was.
Boo the politicians? Hooray to that. Boo the players? Perish the thought. But I was among groundlings, and spontaneous exhibitions of disapproval is part of their DNA. Despite the price being right at free, Othello elicited a tirade from a man sporting a heavy-metal T-shirt and a mullet-hawk. As he made a conspicuous and hasty departure midway through the play, he shouted "Suck!!!" He used his 19th-century theatre voice to insure far-off groundlings and players alike could hear his cry. Presumably, his monosyllabic outburst was used adjectivally, and referred to the play. He continued, "You are terrible at what you do!"
I was torn by his performance. On the one hand, anybody who dares to stand out as an individual in this age of crowds wins my admiration. On the other hand, the play didn't suck, he hadn't sacrificed lucre to see it, and thousands of others came to watch Othello and not the protestations of a passionately disappointed theatre-goer. My final verdict is that the man was entertaining but rude. The groundlings in front that sat on throne-sized beach chairs, texted throughout the performance, and got up to leave at intermission believing the play finished weren't entertaining at all--just rude, or perhaps more accurately, boorish.
Happy endings are overrated. When the slow-motion trainwreck that could have been averted at countless turns finally wrecks, I feel satisfied. Other groundlings seem disappointed, a few vocally so--as if their words might entice the actors--who are not actors but very real to them by this point--to revolt and change Shakespeare's ending. Alas, Shakespeare has the final say, and this groundling departs happy for sad endings.
And speaking of the Governor, he had his "let them eat cake" moment the other day when, commenting on an infrastructure problem on route 93 that backed up traffic considerably, he said that everybody should have just come to see him and catch Shakespeare on the Common.
Can you say incompetent tool?
