The impact of the play in performance
My concern here is with the text itself rather than the production or approaches and so I will stay as far as possible with accounts that engage with the text in performance.
This email from Professor Gordon McMullan of Kings College London offers an indication that many of the aims and objectives I have outlined were realised in performance:
'I very much enjoyed seeing (and subsequently reading the script of) Gareth Somers’ 1616, which we included in the festival we ran at King’s in 2016 in conjunction with the Shakespeare400 season we initiated and coordinated with London’s cultural and creative sector to mark the Shakespeare Quatercentenary. The play brings new perspective to the tradition of playwrights imagining Shakespeare’s last days (Bond’s Bingo, Whelan’s The Herbal Bed), drawing on extensive but unobtrusively deployed research to offer a poetic dramatization of the mindset of a writer at the end of his life, reflecting on the mix of the creative, the domestic and the prosaic that the extant documents make clear formed Shakespeare’s life. Fragmented lines draw the audience into an end-of-life dreamspace – partly needy, partly melancholy, partly self-congratulatory – with Jonson, Greene and others acting as frenemy antagonists to provoke Shakespeare into justification for a life not always as well lived or as kind as he might have wished. Drawing lines from Shakespeare’s works naturally into the mix – mostly from his Elizabethan works rather than his Jacobean, as if the dying man has mostly reverted to his younger self for his final reflections, though James I’s accession and the burning of the Globe are there too as the play increases in haste (and in anxiety) in its final scenes – Somers has created an engaging evocation of playwright and period.'
Professor Gordon McMullan, Director, London Shakespeare Centre, Department of English, King's College London
I also recieved emails from academics who saw the performance in Memphis at Rhodes College:
'The theatrical event was rich and evocative, and the script neatly wove together many of the scraps of quotations and anecdote that have outlasted Shakespeare's life, offering them as a compelling one-man show. The draw of a solo performance is always at least half in watching a gifted performer work their craft, and I was certainly not disappointed. All points of emotion one might imagine – grief, regret, loss, joy and resilient humor – were richly visible.'
Michael Saenger, Associate Professor of English, Southwestern University.
'I really liked the darker intimations you played with. I think you get at the complex of issues that may have been working in Will's psyche in a really compelling way. I also dug the way you dealt with the question of things experienced along the way that older self might look back on with some discomfort – neglect of the wife and kids, ambition, shady business dealings, romance (or buggery), other possible regrets. Anybody who doesn't admit to these sorts of ghosts in the closet by the time they start moving through their fifties and facing the limits of age and time is bullshitting themselves.
You made Shakespeare really human and I thought that the way you did so was very cool. Still, there were comic touches occasionally, which caused me to chuckle. Penitent, a bit tortured and regretful, but still possessing the wit. That's the Shakespeare I saw in your production and it really spoke to me. I really admire what you're doing.'
Eric J. Griffin, Janice B. Trimble Professor and Chair of English, Millsaps College.
'In 2016, I hosted an international symposium on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. When I learned of Gareth Somers’ 1616, I wondered whether it would be worth our while to bring him to Memphis to perform his one-person show. It was. His conversation-provoking production (including innovative use of found objects for an impromptu set) served as the ideal capstone to our weekend.'
Scott Newstok, Founding Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
Review by Mark Russell, The Open Eye:
'I had expected the ubiquitous ‘One Man Show’; I really must have my ‘Level of Expectation’ tuned. Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Burbage all graced us with their presence as did many and varied members of Will Shakespeare’s Family, the odd Serving Wench, Whore and Lover. Elizabeth I popped along at one point. Gareth did perform solo but I can, hand on heart, swear that all the others did ‘appear’.
If I may plagiarise from other reviewers – a not uncommon practice in Elizabethan times it is suggested – read on: 'Excellent production, captivating and a real theatrical experience'; 'Excellent in its range, detailed and magnificently performed'; 'Engaging, totally absorbing and poignant'; 'An astounding performance.'