British theatre comes to life in Karachi with Shakespeare’s Fool

For theatre enthusiasts in Karachi, experiencing a production from British theatre has often seemed like a distant dream. However, thanks to the World Culture Festival, that dream became a reality for many in the audience on Wednesday, when a British theatre group presented a musical and Shakespearean play titled Shakespeare’s Fool.

The concept was to showcase dialogues primarily delivered by foolish characters from Shakespearean plays, accompanied by elegant dance that expressed the mood, emotions and actions conveyed in the dialogues.

Throughout most of the performance, dramatic reader Jan Martin stood on a dais, brilliantly reciting Shakespearean lines selected from a variety of plays, such as As You Like It, King Lear, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Winter’s Tale, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night, while dancers performed in the centre, illustrating the recited dialogues.

Complementing the voice artiste and dancers was a musical duo on the piano and the cello positioned on the other side of the stage. The performance was directed by Maren Stott of the Eurythmy West Mainlands theatre group. She was also one of the performers.

The dance form featured continuous, swirling movements. The loose shirts and scarves flowed gently with the elegant choreography, creating the impression of a pleasant breeze.

This elegance persisted even when the dancers depicted the violent storm from the famous scene in King Lear, where he is homeless and accompanied only by his fool in the cold tempest.

The performance began with the dramatic reader descending the stairs to the stage, exclaiming how the utterances of fools in Shakespearean plays often contained more wisdom than those of normal characters.

The first recitation was a dialogue by the melancholy Jacques from As You Like It, featuring the beautiful lines: “...from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe / And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot / And thereby hangs a tale.”

As You Like It reappeared later in the performance as four dancers portrayed Rosalind’s lines near the end of the play, when the love square created by her disguise as a boy is about to be resolved.

The spectacle of four dancers attempting to woo one among them, who does not reciprocate their affections and is interested in one of the other characters, was particularly engaging.

Interestingly, it was a monologue from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, perhaps the least acclaimed play included in the performance, that garnered the most applause.

This segment featured two actors on stage, one of whom impersonated a dog. The combination of the actor’s portrayal of a dog and the beautiful dialogue delivery by the other actor elicited prolonged applause as the two performers exited the stage.

The performance concluded with a poem from Twelfth Night, stating: “...our play is done / And we’ll strive to please you every day.”