The Report of a Sonnet

How wonderful it is to see a brain, a voice and rhythm

Working together to bring out the melody:

Marťa luring the mind, Dan moving the feet – swing ‘em!

‘‘Tis pure music’ Hilly says, now to perfect the verbal malady.

Invoking the spirit of the poems, you could taste it in the air,

Timeless themes sung in a timely key: gospel, chanson, blues;

Emotional truth so striking, the tunes do bear,

Of love making worth the strife, or a sex-change operation – just choose.

In the ninth line Mr Hilský told us much oft’ happeneth,

Nobody there would doubt the soul of man:

And then hermelín, strawberries – music for the deaf!

Meeting brilliant people of the same turn, that’s how the rest ran.

      Absorbing Shaky’s genius through and through

      What is more important than me and you?

Even the bleak weather suggested some vile act of Englishness was about to go down. The celebration of William Shakespeare’s 450^th birthday took place in the Kolowrat theatre and one could sense it in the humid air that “Culture” was the crunch of the evening (besides delicious Elizabethan-themed snacks, cheese and wine – especially that sweet lemon-ish candy, Bětka you know what I’m talking about).

Some Guy (the art director of the theatre who also starred in Macbeth) introduced the show which featured none other than a man of Shakespeare’s own spirit himself, Martin Hilský; next there was Daniel Dobiáš, a musical composer, who put Shakespeare’s sonnets to music, sang and played the piano. They were accompanied by two singers, Josef Guruncz and Jessica Boone, a flashy-eyed epitome of a delicate Lady who also starred in Macbeth, and with whom I had the infinite pleasure to converse. Each of the sonnets (76, 25, 18, 20, 30, 64, 50, 66 + 2 encores) was introduced (sometimes read in its entirety) by Mr Hilský in his notoriously deeply insightful and riveting fashion that we all know from his lectures. Then the musicians took over. English and Czech overlapped as the genres shifted rather often; Dan Dobiáš always struck the right key, most remarkably with Sonnet 50 put in Gospel – Mrs Boone (who later admitted she’d been particularly apprehensive about this piece) gave an astonishing performance hitting the high notes with heartfelt precision.

It was rather surprising to see, upon attaching myself to a tour through the theatre offices, so many different devices to relax: there was a serene ‘green room’, there were wire crowns from Macbeth crumpled into little balls which has been presented as a very therapeutic activity and if nothing worked, Guy Roberts sighed and pointing to the T.V. confessed there’s always Game of Thrones to numb the mind. And to further the note, one of the encores of the show featured the famous sonnet that mocks the angelic lady of Petrarch’s sonnets by inverting all the stock clichés about her ethereal golden-locked perfection. Mr Hilský winked a funny tooth as he advanced with a straight face some theories of academics who asserted that the lady’s reeking breath might have been caused by wine and garlic.            

Jaromír Lelek