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?
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
