Flamin'eck: Simon Callow is on fire in his one-man show about Shakespeare Pic: Simon Annand
If your life depended on finding someone to command a big stage single-handedly for the best part of two hours, Simon Callow would probably be on your shortlist. He is not entirely unsupported here; there is a little back projection, one or two cute little effects, a discreet touch of music and sound, an upright chair and a plain wooden platform to give him a step on which to sit or a platform from which to declaim. But basically it’s just Callow, in a black, crushed velvet suit and plain white shirt. Callow, that is, and, of course, Shakespeare.
It is Callow’s transparent and unashamed enthusiasm – adoration would not be too strong a word - for Shakespeare’s plays and poetry that transforms what might otherwise be little more than an illustrated lecture into something altogether richer and more satisfying, even moving.
Using Jaques oft-quoted, and even more oft misquoted, seven ages of man speech from As You Like It as a structure, Callow and his writer, Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate, knit a seamless garment (well, as he explains, the Shakespeares were in the clothing trade) from the life and the work, embroidered overall with Callow’s characteristically orotund but never less than convincing performance.
Speeches, characters and snatches of poetry, plus some well-informed speculation, are used to flesh out the relatively few facts we can really be sure of in Shakespeare’s life. And they take special care to explain how the grammar school boy from the provinces could become the greatest playwright the world has ever seen.
You might take issue with the idea that the work grows as specifically out of the life as the script suggests. There’s some dramatic licence in the linking of incident and play. You might even be one of the doubters who like to argue that the whole story simply does not add up, in which case you may find solace in George Dillon’s one man show, The Man who was Hamlet, about the Earl of Oxford being the “real” Shakespeare which is also playing on the Fringe this summer.
But there is no room for doubt in Callow’s Shakespeare. Like his idol, he also sees all the world as a stage. By the time these revels are ended, you will too.
Shakespeare: the Man from Stratford, Assembly @ George Street until August 30: 0131 623 3030. Glasgow Theatre Royal 21-25 September; 08448 717 647
