Solanio’s Swinging Speakeasy: Guildford Shakespeare Company’s Shakespeare Solitaire
As Gemma and I noted in our article earlier this week, ‘after being forced to close [during lockdown], the theatre industry has reacted with agility and imagination — offering theatre audiences new and exciting ways to engage with performance’. So far, it is the smaller theatre companies and groups of actors rather than the big names that have proven the most agile, adopting the Live Online Performance and Virtual Theatre Performance models of Lockdown Shakespeare to create innovative forms of online theatre. Guildford Shakespeare Company (GSC) is no exception, having developed a Zoom-facilitated interactive murder mystery production — The Shakespeare Solitaire — whilst their physical performance space remains closed.
As the very nature of a murder mystery revolves around discovering who committed the crime, I’ll avoid discussion of the details of The Shakespeare Solitaire’s plot. However, it is worth noting the way in which GSC incorporate Shakespeare into the production. The performance is not an adaptation of a Shakespeare play, but instead includes Shakespearean nods in a way that brings to mind the postmodern pop culture referentiality of something like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (an adaptation which has also received the Lockdown Shakespeare treatment through Secret Cinema’s Secret Sofa event, which Gemma wrote about earlier this week). The advertising boards and shop names which adorn Luhrmann’s Verona Beach reference numerous other Shakespearean works, giving those who recognise the visual and textual nods an extra level of satisfaction whilst watching the film. ‘Easter eggs’ such as these help Shakespeare aficionados feel as though they’re getting something more, or something different, from the film than many inthe primary target audience of teenagers are likely to experience.
As a company specialising in Shakespearean performance and likely to attract audiences familiar with Shakespeare’s works, GSC take a similar approach. Most overtly, The Shakespeare Solitaire is populated entirely by characters whose names are inspired by those found in Shakespeare. The characters bear little if any relation to Shakespeare’s, instead offering audience members the chance to see how many play references they can spot. The Shakespearean intertextuality extends to the historical figure as well as his plays — the titular diamond in the world of the production supposedly belonged to Shakespeare and is thought to be cursed, with a suggestion that Christopher Marlowe’s untimely death was in some way caused by his possession of the Solitaire. There are also subtle inclusions which show a pleasing attention to detail: a copy of a will participants are shown at one point has a signatory with the surname ‘Hathaway’ — something which one of my fellow investigators recognised as a reference to the real William Shakespeare’s wife Anne. Just as Luhrmann gave those who know their Shakespeare ‘easter eggs’ to find throughout his film, so GSC crammed The Shakespeare Solitaire with as many Shakespearean references as they could.
Considering the production as an example of Lockdown Shakespeare, The Shakespeare Solitaire is a prime example of how malleable Zoom can be in allowing theatremakers to structure a Virtual Theatre Performance. As with Creation Theatre’s The Tempest, audience members were invited to the Zoom call, with a pre-show email giving instructions of how to participate and encouraging audience members to dress appropriately for the production’s roaring twenties setting. The Zoom conference opened around fifteen minutes before the murder mystery narrative began, which on a practical level ensured all audience members were present before the start of the story. From a performance perspective, this also allowed GSC to create the immersive world of ‘Solanio’s Swinging Speakeasy’ through a largely unscripted pre-show element. Solanio (Sarah Gobran) assumed a compère role, speaking directly to participants to learn names as well as engage in lighthearted improvised banter. Costume efforts were both praised and gently mocked, and one audience member whose screen name had defaulted to add the word ‘iPad’ after their surname was asked if they were related to an iPad family Solanio ‘knew’. In both setting up the time-blended 1920s meets 2020s world of The Shakespeare Solitaire and getting audience members relaxed into the interactive nature of the production, the pre-show worked very well.
Once the murder mystery narrative began, GSC differentiated the various parts of the performance through confident use of Zoom as a platform. The ‘Main Room’ was where the key plot points unfolded. Solanio directed the audience to switch to ‘Speaker View’ when in the Main Room so that the action cut to whoever was speaking, and the characters interacted with each other whilst the audience microphones set to mute by the producer. When it came to interrogating each character, audience members were separated into groups, with each group invited to a ‘Breakout Room’ to question an individual character. Before entering the Breakout Room, Solanio advised participants to switch to ‘Gallery View’ so that they could see both the character and each other. The Breakout Room interrogations were therefore established as entirely interactive, and being grouped with a handful of other audience members throughout the production allowed participants to build up connections with each other — our collective questioning of a suspect certainly felt more confident towards the end of the evening than it did at the start!
From a theatrical perspective, this highlights one of the key features of the Virtual Theatre Performance model — that of uniqueness. There were essentially as many different versions of The Shakespeare Solitaire taking place as there were interrogation groups during the performance I attended, and that performance was also uniquely influenced by those who attended at the same time as me. I could never go back and see exactly the same performance again. Inspector Gaunt (Matt Pinches), who was leading the investigation, invited audience members at the end of the performance to vote on who they believed was guilty using Zoom’s ‘Poll’ function — another deft use of the platform to create an interactive theatre experience. It also highlighted a further parallel between the Virtual Theatre Performance model and a face-to-face murder mystery performance: my conclusions as to the identity of the culprit (or culprits) was undoubtedly influenced by the order I interacted with the suspects, adding a further level of uniqueness to my experience.
As with other examples of Lockdown Shakespeare created for our specific moment, as well as with traditional murder mystery evenings, The Shakespeare Solitaire highlighted enjoyment and human connection over creating something that delved into complex characters and themes. I came away from the performance not only feeling thoroughly entertained by the combination of Shakespearean intertextuality and exaggerated comedic performances, but also impressed by the way GSC had tightly and confidently transferred the murder mystery model to Zoom. A murder mystery performance’s inherent game-like nature lends itself well to online technology and interactivity. But GSC’s innovative approach to live performance in lockdown offers a wealth of examples of how theatremakers can use platforms like Zoom as a performance space to create theatre in lockdown.
The Guildford Theatre Company’s production of The Shakespeare Solitaire has now ended. However, the company is reimagining its 2015 stage production of The Wind In The Willows as an online performance between 4–7 June 2020. Tickets are currently available to purchase on the company’s website.
