GetOut Magazine

Inside jokes render chuckles from the self-satisfied bard-obsessed
By CHRIS PAGE
GET OUT

You can spot a Shakespeare snob in a theater audience rather easily. He's the guy who laughs at every obscure joke and revels in every Shakespearean barb.

He's the schmo who explains plot points to nearby strangers and hovers around small groups at intermission, hoping to hear an “I don't get it ... ” so he can swoop in and set things straight.

He's debated William Shakespeare's authorship of “Cardenio” on Internet message boards and actually replied “Blech!” to hearing Kenneth Branagh's name.

In other words, he's a jerk — the Bore of the Bard — and he's not alone.

There may be no Shakespeare Snobs Anonymous. But thankfully, at least there's Amy Freed's 2001 farce, “The Beard of Avon,” a play perfectly suited for Shakespeare aficionados. Currently being staged in Tempe by Actors' Renaissance Theatre, it's the closest thing to a Mad magazine spoof, or Zucker Brothers movie, the Bard of Avon's ever been subjected to.

In the opening scenes of “Beard,” we meet the shell of the man who will become Shakespeare, a balding, near-illiterate bumpkin (played by Dave Edmunds) anchored to a family and marriage that, in a fit of midlife crisis, he decides he no longer wants.

But he's enchanted by a group of actors he meets (they're staging the theatrical flavor of the day: Lots of bawdy toilet humor) and soon he's abandoned his wife (Kelley Guarneri) for London and dreams of being a great actor.

He's sidelined when, lo and behold, he can't really act, but soon he has greatness thrust upon him: Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford (Matthew Proschold), a hedonist with a penchant for playwriting, pens “Titus Andronicus” under Shakespeare's name — because, as de Vere says, “to fraternize with actors is to debase oneself.”

THE NAME GAME

From there, as Freed's farcical Shakespearean fantasia spins into motion, the Bard's acclaim grows as more would-be playwrights, from Francis Bacon to Queen Elizabeth I, emerge to borrow Shakespeare's name. It's a grand riff on the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays — after all, how could a country clodhopper write with such poetic grace?

Freed deliciously plays with themes from Shakespeare's words, whether it's a rubber rat held aloft like Yorick's skull, scenes of mistaken identity or a love triangle similar to the one hinted at in Shakespeare's sonnets.
Freed leaves no Shakespeare controversy unexplained. In the end, a frustrated Shakespeare, like an overproduced pop music ingenue who desperately wants to write her own material, throws up his hands: “My name's become a brand!”

Actors' Renaissance Theatre's production is a low-budget affair, with a drab set that's just risers and boxes and costumes cribbed from the Southwest Shakespeare Company warehouse. But the show, directed by ART's James Barnard, compensates with uniformly strong acting and a wry comic sensibility.

Edmunds plays Shakespeare with less an eye for the likability Freed grants the character — a hayseed who, in the end, becomes the stuff of legend — than for the schlubiness of a middle-aged man with a paunch and a bad comb-over. He's repurposed Shakespeare as an Elizabethan George Costanza, which is an interesting, if offbeat, choice.

‘The Beard of Avon'
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Sept. 4
Where: Tempe Performing Arts Center, 132 E. Sixth St., Tempe
How much: $12-$15
Info:
GRADE: B+