Does verse have a place in modern theater?
Greetings from the UK! Land of the likes of Shakespeare and Marlowe and their iconic plays written in iambic pentameter, a form of verse consisting of ten syllables, alternating between stress and unstressed, like a heartbeat. Since the Elizabethan era it’s fallen off a bit, in favor of more colloquial matters of speech. Naturalism gained momentum at the turn of the last century and it’s still a strong force across various artistic mediums, especially held in high esteem in theatre and film, where both writers and actors are encouraged to create the illusion of reality. In reality, we don’t go around speaking in verse. And the language can prove to be difficult to understand without study. But surely with the ongoing popularity of Shakespeare, there could be a place for verse in the modern theatre? Could verse be done in a way that is accessible to all audiences?
Writer and Director Eleanor Sturt of the theater company Versed Page has set out to achieve just that. She aims to introduce audiences to versed text in a modern setting, and not as a reimagined classical text, but in the form of new plays. Her joy for this medium is palpable in her latest work, The Flute. Joining her are producer Brent Tan and Musical Director Jack Gionis. The latter’s efforts come in the form of classically inspired solo flute music. As a flutist, I was curious to see how solo flute music could be incorporated into a play. I remember a conductor once telling our symphony that a flute does not work solo. I simply disagree and I think this piece shows that any instrument can become a powerful tool on stage when done with intention.
The Flute tells the story of a young woman named Mads (Catherine Davies) who finds herself in the possession of a love letter, and possibly a love triangle. She spends a portion of the play in various forms of indecisiveness punctuated by the sound of the titular flute. Part her solace in aloneness, part the conflicted voices in her head, and her heart, the flute is a sound only she can hear. Sturt plays Marie, Mads’ doting sister, and Adam Christian David plays Theo, her reserved soon to be brother-in-law. Sturt’s lovely energy and David’s stoic manner provide a lovely contrast. Rigolo, played by Szymon Bartoszek, provides the comic relief; he is very reminiscent of a Shakespearean fool, providing both humor and wisdom, which Bartoszek does just brilliantly.
The most memorable relationship in the play is between Mads and her best friend Jude played by Havilah Davis. Jude is an anchor throughout the play. Jude is our grasp on reality. It has become pivotal in modern media to find ourselves drawn to strong female friendships. For so long writers who dominated media excluded meaningful relationships between women, but in reality some of our deepest and longest forms of love are found in these friendships. Davis performs Jude with the warmth and sensitivity this friendship deserves.
And of course the show wouldn’t be possible without our flutist, Hannah Gillingham. It was an absolutely stunning balance between soundtrack and character. The flute is present for us the audience to see and hear, and for Mads to hear, but invisible to everyone else. Davies as Mads provides a powerful soliloquy near the end, when she declares love wants to be held and the flute is not a vessel therefore it cannot be held. However to the audience, the flute is so tangible, that I think it really brings to question the idea of reality versus illusion. Much like the letter itself, and Mads’ relationship to the flute, I think as an audience we come away wondering which parts of Mads’ story were real and which parts were merely, the flute. Theater often is a suspension of reality, even much more so with verse, so the heightened text itself plays into this question of what’s real and what isn’t. In the end the things Mads and we as an audience thought were very much real, end up not being real, and the things questioned, end up being very much real.
I think there’s still a place for verse in theater, and I think plays can utilize creative devices and interdisciplinary mediums to create impactful art. Speckled with references to Banksy and sourdough starters (a big laugh for Havilah Davis’s Jude), modern audiences can find themselves enjoying and understanding different forms of language in the context of their own realities. Empathy doesn’t have to be selective, and we can find ourselves as an audience embracing differences in speech, voice, and language. And hopefully that can transcend into our everyday realities, too.
Follow along Versed Page’s journey to bring The Flute to wider audiences at https://www.instagram.com/versedpage
