Fifth Folio Theatre’s debut play Understudy No. 5 follows a janitor who finds himself possessed by minor Shakespearean characters unhappy with their lot in the original plays. We sat down with Hadrian to discuss their upcoming performance.
This show runs 14-15th October at Etcetera Theatre – Tickets here
Talk us through the process of writing Understudy No. 5 and performing it as a WIP through to now- how has it changed over time?
The show started at Old Red Lion’s Monday monologue night back in February, when I did a piece I’d written and Jack who runs the venue suggested an August WIP slot for ShakeFest. I wasn’t going to say no to a theatre space, but the next day: ‘Oh I have to write a play!’
Writing is a Frankensteinic process for me. Much of Understudy was stitched together in development with Warren, and it felt really solid for a WIP. The showing was incredibly useful; I find for direct-address solo shows, it’s almost impossible to know what the play’s like until it’s performed.
The main post-WIP rewrite was replacing Feste with an unnamed Shakespearean musician, as the audience found him difficult to connect with, and he never quite fit structurally. Also fixing a few logical inconsistencies and adding better music that I didn’t write and record in a panic two nights before the show.
What drew you to minor Shakespearean characters?
I’ve always been drawn to minor characters generally (I remember in uni asking a professor to let me write a story about a 14th-century monk who stumbled across the concept of mathematical probability and was reprimanded by god rather than an essay).
“There are no small parts, only small actors” I think often misses the point. To truly do a character justice, I believe you need to love them in some sense. And when that character has little stage time, wanting more isn’t always an ego thing. Sometimes you simply want to spend more time with them, just as you want to spend more time with your friends and family. Even if they’re not a minor character, you still usually have to let them go eventually. Theatre is inevitably ephemeral, and it’s always a bit like a breakup you didn’t initiate.
Having both written and performed the piece, what do you think using poetic forms brings to the piece, other than referencing Shakespeare’s use of them?
The piece would be impossible without the poetic (and prosaic) language and forms, as in several parts they are the exact structures that shackle the characters. This is, as I’d say the rest of the play is, in dialogue with Shakespeare rather than reference – while much of Shakespeare’s use of verse was to do with practicalities, it also has alllll these other meanings and effects. What does strict iambic pentameter say about a character? What does prose imply? What about rhyming, bouncy verse? They all have associations only further set by the way Shakespeare sits in the canon and in education, which makes it really fertile material.
Does connecting the figure of the janitor to the now very respectable- or at least respected- world of Shakespeare change how he is received or vice versa, especially given the themes of agency and class at play?
When I started writing the piece, I thought the janitor framed the monologues, but as development has continued I’ve realised that the framing device is actually Shakespeare. His characters are the mechanism through which we discover the janitor, rather than vice versa, and also the mechanism through which he discovers himself. Honestly, this play could still work almost as well if the monologues came from Marlowe or Homer or Austen. As long as they’re coming from well-known, ‘important’ texts – that weight is the driving force behind the play.
That’s the major thing to say, the reversal of who’s centralised and who’s sidelined: just as the Shakespearean characters are the ones put to the side in their plays, the janitor is the one actually put to the side. Benvolio may be benched during Romeo and Juliet, but he’s still afforded the fundamental privilege of appearing in the play at all.
How do you make a reinterpretation of Shakespeare stand out in such a crowded field?
To be honest I just sort of stumbled onto a premise that intrigues people. I suppose also it distinguishes itself by not just being a reinterpretation or a modern version of Shakespeare, but rather something of its own that happens to be in dialogue with him and his characters.
I do also get a bit of a kick being an Aussie in the field, as I think there’s still a bit of an attitude that Shakespeare’s not really for non-British people. It’s changing, but still present – I know some Aussie actors who recently brought a Shakespeare-adjacent show to the UK and were met with “Why would I want to see Shakespeare done by Australians?” So I think that plays into it as well, or at least it makes me enjoy it more!
What is it about Shakespeare’s plays that make them stand the test of time?
Romanticised answer: he was a literary genius. More realistic answer: he might have been (if you believe in genius), and his themes remain relevant, but that’s the case for plenty of other playwrights.
I think it’s rather the way the canon snowballs when someone is important to it. They become more and more and more important, and people write things engaging with their work, and then more people hear about it, and see it, and write more things, and schools start to teach it, so more people know about it, and write about it, and talk about it, and so on, and so on. The canon grows in weight by feeding on itself.
Bach, for instance, we likely wouldn’t remember if Mendelssohn hadn’t revived his work decades later. It’s what people say about ‘genius’, you know: that when the world has such inequality and oppression, there could well be hundreds of Shakespeares or Bachs that didn’t have access to the necessary education, opportunities, or were killed before they had the chance to create.