Sweet William, devised and performed by Michael Pennington at Guthrie Theater on 12/11/07

By: David de Young

Photo by Laurance Burns

English actor Michael Pennington, perhaps best known by the American general public for his portrayal of Moff Jerjerrord in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi, saw his first Shakespeare play, Macbeth, at the Old Vic in London at the age of 11. He was enthralled with the bard from that point on. Recently, Pennington put together this one man show (he had previously done a similar show about Anton Chekov) in which he intersperses Shakespeare’s words from the plays and sonnets with facts and speculations about of Shakespeare’s life and anecdotes from his own.

The two hour production (with a 20 minute intermission) had a recent run in the UK at The Little Angel, an intimate puppet theater in North London I used to frequent as a youngster. Sweet William opened stateside at the Guthrie in Minneapolis on Tuesday, December 11^th. The limited engagement runs through December 22^nd.

Pennington exhibits Shakespeare using excerpts from Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard III, The Winter’s Tale and other plays. And he even explores Shakespeare’s so-called “lost years” (as much as one can as there’s not much known of the time between when Shakespeare left his birthplace of Stratford around 1585 and the time he started making his mark on the London theater scene in 1592). Pennington claims to have found clues in the sonnets to support his claim that the bard may have been a traveling actor during those years, albeit one who was “always complaining about the script.”

At intermission time, my companion remarked that she didn’t even need a break, despite the fact that Pennington had already been at it up there for a straight hour. It’s a testament to his ability to stand (and occasionally sit) on a stage empty save for an ornate chair, with no props other than a red handkerchief and still keep you interested. (If only my Shakespeare prof in college had been as readily able to pull off this feat!)

After intermission Pennington returned to the stage more casually dressed, looking almost youthful for his 64 years. He spoke of co-founding the English Shakespeare Company in 1986 (with Michael Bogdanov) out of an interest in presenting Shakespeare’s plays in more topical and modern interpretations than the Royal Shakespeare Company was doing at the time.

I found interesting Pennington’s suggestion that Shakespeare’s tragic heroes were most often men because women less frequently descend to the levels of foolishness required of such characters. I also found it helpful that Pennington explored the historical relationship of Shakespeare to James I of England, who was king for part of the time Shakespeare worked in London. He contrasted Shakespeare’s work under James to his work under Elizabeth I, who had ruled England up until 1603. 

Pennington is versatile as - in the parlance of the times - all get go. The performance is delightful and well worth your money. Fittingly, Pennington wraps it all up with a recitation of Shakespeare’s self-penned epitaph (“Cursed be he that moves my bones.”)   He spoke to the fact that most of Shakespeare’s life had been spent practicing self-concealment (something that is, I think, more common in writers than is commonly suspected). He went so far as to suggest that Shakespeare is good for the health, and that getting together as we had done this night (as an audience) to partake of our own singular experiences was one of the more important thing we can do.

He ended with a fitting quote from renowned movie producer and studio founder Samuel Goldwyn (Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer), who in referring to Shakespeare had once said, “Fantastic! And it was all written with a feather!” 

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Location Info: Guthrie Theater
Artist Info: Michael Pennington

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