Actor Simon Callow is making his Stratford Shakespeare Festival debut in a one-man show, “There Reigns Love,” based on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Callow is best known in Canada and the U.S. as Gareth in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” as well as his work in “Amadeus,” “Shakespeare in Love,” and “A Room with a View.” “There Reigns Love” was commissioned by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and builds on a series of sonnet readings Callow has been performing for the past 30 years. The show uses the work of psychoanalyst John Padel as a framing device. Padel believed that, when rearranged correctly, the Sonnets tell the story of a love triangle between Shakespeare, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and the Dark Lady. The show features 80 of the 154 sonnets along with material written by Callow to tie the poems together.
Richard Ouzounian of the Toronto Star gives the production three and half stars out of four, writing, “The Olympics started here on Sunday night when Simon Callow gave a gold-medal display of acting skill in There Reigns Love…we ride with Callow on the wave of fierce emotion that ripped Shakespeare’s life apart. At other moments, we share the deeply philosophical thoughts about love and mortality that these poems stirred up in the Bard of Avon.” The one flaw in the whole enterprise,” Ouzounian writes, “is that Callow is so intent on our understanding everything that he spends far too much time filling in background and setting the scene while we are anxious for “the thing itself”: the poetry of Shakespeare and the genius of Callow.” (Read the complete Star review)
J. Kelly Nestruck of the Globe and Mail doesn’t share Ouzounian’s enthusiasm. Nestruck gives the production two and half stars in a mixed review, writing, “When he acts out some of the Sonnets while grappling with invisible characters, the exercise can become silly. But when he performs several that deal with the poet’s desire to keep his loved one young and perfect by making him immortal through poetry, Callow turns in a tormented, desperate performance…This is impossible obsession, ugly and inspiring.” Nestruck was also bothered by numerous technical problems, noting, “Under-rehearsed, There Reigns Love was full of miscues on opening night. Lights illuminated parts of the stage where no one sat or left Callow delivering lines in the dark. Unnecessary harpsichord interrupted him mid-stanza, and Callow himself stumbled, searched and skipped.” (Read the full Globe and Mail review)
John Coulbourn of the London Free Press gives the show three and half stars out of five. Coulbourn calls the show a ‘problematic work’ but finds something to appreciate, writing, “Callow begins what initially feels like high school lectures, save for the fact that this is a lecturer caught up in his subject and gifted in recitation. But as the work progresses, transformations from theory to poetry marked by the off-stage strumming of a lyre, it becomes more and more theatrical, with Callow… through the power of his recitation, making us see the world through Shakespeare’s great love and his great loss, using sonnets more at home on the page than the stage.” (Read the entire Free Press review)
Valerie Hill of The Record picked up on the lecture hall aspect of the show but says this worked for the audience. Hill writes, “He talks to the audience, explains the theories behind their meaning and does so with such humour and charm the audience is mesmerized. You really believe everything he is saying is strictly off the cuff and you want to shoot up your hand to ask questions. Of course, in theatre, this is frowned upon.” (Read the Record review here)
Finally, Sharon Malvern of The Beacon Herald agrees that the show isn’t traditional theatre but says,”Mr. Callow’s performance was amazing. Reciting 80 sonnets is not the same thing as working with a plot and a cast of characters. However, he used the entire stage, with a few minimal props, and held the audience enthralled with his dramatic portrayal of Shakespeare’s sonnets.” (Read the entire Herald review)
You can join a live webcast about “There Reigns Love” with Simon Callow and Antoni Cimolino on Wednesday, July 16th, 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
“There Reigns Love” continues at the Tom Patterson Theatre at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada until August 3.
Web Resources:
Stratford Shakespeare Festival website
Toronto Star article- Passionate poems are stage star’s love of a lifetime
