Michael Pennington: Oxford Playhouse (From The Oxford Times)
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Michael Pennington: Oxford Playhouse
3:03pm Wednesday 1st February 2012 in Theatre / Art By Nick Utechin
Michael Pennington: Oxford Playhouse
"There is an upstart crow,” wrote playwright Robert Greene in 1592 — the first mention of William Shakespeare as an actor and writer that we know of soon after he arrived in London. And where had he been for the previous seven years? No one knows; there is an absolute blank.
Michael Pennington, one of our great classical Shakespearian actors, shared a theory with a mesmerised Playhouse audience last Friday evening, calling upon one of the Sonnets (No. 109) to back him up: in it, Shakespeare speaks of travel and being away from home and “(making) myself a motley to the view” — that is, he was a touring actor.
This was but one of the drops of scholarship to which Pennington made us privy in this finely-tuned one man show which he has toured for some years now but seemed as freshly presented as if he had been scribbling some notes backstage. It was a privilege to hear him draw on his vast experience of performing and writing about William Shakespeare and witnessing his own enthusiasm — as strong today as it was 56 years ago, when his parents took him to see Macbeth at the Old Vic.
I recall the cadences of his voice, and a delivery that would have brought clarity and complete understanding of the sometimes-complex verse to the most bored of schoolchildren. And Pennington shone light on Shakespeare’s life and work from unusual directions: A Winter’s Tale, Henry VI Part 3, Measure For Measure, Timon of Athens (this last never performed in his lifetime, Pennington suggested, because it gave an unnervingly accurate picture of life at James I’s court).
The Bard gave us “a throng of voices”, the actor told us: he was “an ungovernable talent” and “had the ability to sing both high and low”. Those of us (myself included) waiting for him to sign copies of his newly published book, Sweet William, could have used all three quotations about Michael Pennington himself.
