“Venus & Adonis was one of the shows I was most proud of at the RSC because it’s a very simple, beautiful story full of joy and tragedy. It’s like stepping into a Chagall painting,” Sir Greg Doran explains.
‘Venus & Adonis was one of the shows I was most proud of at the RSC’
How to stage Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis had been a question that plagued the former Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company during his tenure there. How could he bring the famous, erotic, ethereal Shakespeare poem alive on a modern stage and do it justice?
But then Greg visited Japan, stumbling across a Bunraku puppet show, and was immediately captivated by the ancient theatre tradition, and its “perfect balance of poetry, narrative, music and puppetry.”
‘I hope shakespeare would approve, but I like to think he would love it’
On his return Greg set about realising his vision with the help of Little Angel Theatre, and the hour long Venus & Adonis opened at the RSC in 2004 to great acclaim.
Using marionettes (puppets on strings) to depict the story of Venus’ obsession with the handsome Adonis, the puppets also breathe life into the cast of horses, wild boar, little hare and the figure of Death.
‘I realised Venus & Adonis still had legs because it’s such an original concept, and there’s a whole new audience out there who haven’t seen it’
“It gained a sort of cult status, so when The RSC needed the storage space, I realised Venus & Adonis still had legs because it’s such an original concept, and there is a whole new audience out there who haven’t seen it,” he says.
Reviving it in its entirety, his Venus & Adonis is now back, on tour and coming to Oxford Playhouse on June 18-19.
“Bringing it back has definitely been a labour of love, but it’s still fresh and works beautifully because the puppets are so versatile and expressive and able to demonstrate the complex emotions found in the Shakespearean gamut,” Greg says.
‘Bringing it back has definitely been a labour of love, but it’s still fresh and works beautifully’
Throw in narrator and famous actor Simon Russell Beale, and Greg says “It has been a joyful experience, because the puppetry enables the audience to go on that journey with you. There is a trust and compliance between the audience and stage, an agreement to suspend disbelief, allowing the audience to use their imaginations even though you can see the puppeteers lifting the hands and feet.
“It’s miraculous because it is very intimately choreographed, like a ballet, and there is no ego with puppeteers – it’s about the communal effect of animating the puppetry.
‘That’s the most extraordinary thing about Shakespeare – the constant new ways of looking at it and developing it in beautiful and interesting ways – to keep telling these great stories about who we are’
“But that’s the most extraordinary thing about Shakespeare – the constant new ways of looking at it and developing it in beautiful and interesting ways – to keep telling these great stories about who we are.”
If you haven’t come across Venus & Adonis, fear not. Greg saying that one of the things he loves most about the poem is that Venus & Adonis is so unknown and unfamiliar while “offering a real insight into Shakespeare’s development as a playwright. It’s like a Shakespeare journal demonstrating the whole of Shakespeare’s range of joy and tragedy as well as his most memorable poetry.”
As for the story, Venus, the goddess of love, is here “capricious, naughty, haughty and flirty” in her quest to seduce and captivate the mortal Adonis. Ultimately about unrequited love, Greg says they have had a lot of fun playing with the concept of Adonis as a gorgeous tomboy disinterested in sex, while examining the issue of consent.
‘There is a trust and compliance between the audience and stage, an agreement to suspend disbelief’
Keen to bewitch us all at Oxford Playhouse next week, I wonder if Shakespeare himself would enjoy it? “Well they had puppet shows in Elizabethan England, and the poem was a massive runaway success written when all the theatres were closed due to the plague, so becoming his most popular printed work during his lifetime. So I hope he would approve, but I like to think he would love it.”
Venus & Adonis comes to Oxford Playhouse from June 17 – 20. Book here https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/events/venus-and-adonis
