{"id":884,"date":"2014-04-23T00:33:56","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T23:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=884"},"modified":"2014-04-23T00:33:56","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T23:33:56","slug":"little-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/04\/little-hawks.html","title":{"rendered":"Little hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Malcontent<\/a><\/p>\n

Polite. Agreeable. Well-behaved. These are not terms that should come to mind when you evoke the seamy edges of Jacobean drama, but they were the impression left by The Malcontent<\/em><\/a>, John Martson\u2019s swingeing tragic-comedy, originally written for a company of child actors, and now revived by Shakespeare\u2019s Globe Young Players<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Marston was 26 at the play\u2019s premiere. He was enmeshed in the combative, scurrilous, authority-tweaking world of wits who were reared in the law and swaggered at the theatre. Marston was a gratifyingly wild child and a trial to his lawyer father, who despaired when John failed to follow in his professional footsteps. Dad even left son a pointed legacy of his law books \u2013 a draft version of the will said tartly that they were going to \u2018him that deserveth them not, that is my wilful disobedient son, who I think will sell them rather than use them.\u2019<\/p>\n

It says something that a man like Marston and his involved, spiky plays suited the repertoire of the children\u2019s companies<\/a>. These are the \u2018little eyases\u2019 \u2013 nests of young hawks \u2013 that Rosencrantz tells Hamlet are stealing all the best gigs from the adult troupes and winning fashionable audiences. Shakespeare didn\u2019t write for them, but many others did, including Jonson, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher (Beaumont\u2019s The Knight of the Burning Pestle<\/em><\/a>, previously at the Wanamaker, was also performed by a children\u2019s company).<\/p>\n

What would it have been like to see these original actors? Ben Jonson\u2019s comedy Cynthia\u2019s Revels<\/em> gives some idea \u2013 in the play Mercury and Cupid disguise themselves as page boys, and say they will \u2018act freely, carelessly and capriciously, as if our veins ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase but what shall come forth steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire.\u2019 A stage full of smart-talking little dazzlers \u2013 no wonder the young hawks were popular.<\/p>\n

Lucy Munro\u2019s study of the most enduring company, the Children of the Queen\u2019s Revels, can only hint at the boys\u2019 companies in performance. Lacking contemporary evidence, she constructs a picture from moralists\u2019 attacks and the plays themselves, and explains that \u2018children\u2019 is an elastic term \u2013 especially as actors grew up with the company, the age range may have stretched from 10 into the early 20s, giving scope for sophisticated writing and performance.<\/p>\n

Like the early-modern adult companies, these were all-male ensembles, and critics of the young actors fixed \u2013 or rather, fixated \u2013 on sex (remember how Graham Greene described the ‘dubious coquetry’ <\/a>of the young Shirley Temple?). One troupe was described as \u2018a nest of boys, able to ravish a man,\u2019 while another claimed that spectators sitting on the stage at an indoor playhouse \u2018may (with small cost) purchase the dear acquaintance of the boys.\u2019 It was even rumoured that the dowager countess of Leicester had married a young actor. The plays themselves raise the miasma of troubling or inappropriate desire, especially through cross-dressing characters. Munro highlights the page Lionell in Chapman\u2019s comedy May Day<\/em>, who turns out to be \u2018a woman disguised as a boy disguised as a woman; complicating things further still, this character was originally, of course, played by a boy.\u2019<\/p>\n

Highlighting the sexual allure of\u00a0school-age performers would be – to put it very mildly – uncomfortable these days, but there are less dodgy ways to unsettle an adult audience. There\u2019s a dash of cross-dressing in The Malcontent<\/em>, too, which is a very adult play \u2013 political intrigue, government riddled with corruption, marriage as the merest cover for infidelity, assassination as a legitimate political manoeuvre. Malevole, the malcontent himself, is a deposed duke who disguises himself as a thorn in the side of the court.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s adult in matter, but wonderfully adolescent in sensibility \u2013 utterly disenchanted, written with eye roll, huffing bad temper, most its characters having the horn or the hump, or both. It should be perfect for a cast of smart, glowering, hormone-surfing young people. Adult audiences might have felt like parents unflatteringly mocked by their merciless teenagers.<\/p>\n

\"Ontroerend<\/a>

Ontroerend Goed in Teenage Riot<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

That\u2019s not what we get at the Globe. It\u2019s hard to see how much support the cast of this intrepid first venture at the enchanting Wanamaker Playhouse (all aged 12-16) have received from their director, Caitlin McLeod. The rambunbctious final jig insists on their cheeky energy \u2013 but for most of the previous 150 minutes, they recite rather than perform, are nice rather than entertainingly obnoxious. There\u2019s no wit, no swagger. We can\u2019t expect the alarming assurance of Jodie Foster\u2019s nightclub siren<\/a> in Bugsy Malone<\/em>, but the Globe might look to the confrontational young casts of Belgium\u2019s Ontroerend Goed<\/a>, who in shows like Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen<\/em> are unpredictable in their wit, attack and vulnerability.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/a>

Sam Hird (left) with Ed Easton in The Malcontent Photo: Alastair Muir<\/p><\/div>\n

Many child performers are required to present the acceptable face of childhood \u2013 the intrepid innocence of Harry Potter, the indomitable Little Miss Sunshine<\/a>, or the endearingly arch Manny<\/a> in Modern Family<\/em>. Although casting them as vile adults, the Globe has tamed its young actors rather than released them. Some of them have some admirably intractable moments, but the only person who gives a properly eye-catching performance is Sam Hird<\/a>, who drags up as the match-making hag Maquerelle. Hird rocks his farthingales, dispenses dating tips, paws a nervous servingman, and with evident dismay is eventually banished to the suburbs. It\u2019s a terrific turn.<\/p>\n

An attack of the polites can overtake the best of people. Marston himself, for all his naughty city ways, eventually left London for a career as a clergyman. His father, who wished that John would \u2018forgo his delight in plays and vain studies and fooleries,\u2019 would have been delighted to find that his son became a Hampshire clergyman, later preventing his name being attached to an edition of his mucky, scurrilous plays. Any hawk can lose its claws \u2013 but surely it deserves a chance to fly.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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