Most of us had to read Shakespeare in high school. Actor Justin Larsche had to … even though he went to trade school for plumbing.
“I thought Shakespeare was the most un-understandable thing that I would ever read or try to attempt to watch,” Larsche said. “The Leonardo DiCaprio ‘Romeo and Juliet’ … was entertaining, but I couldn't understand any of it.”
Since then, he’s gone on to play Count Orsino in “Twelfth Night,” the monster Caliban in “The Tempest,” and now Marc Antony in Lab Theater’s production of “Julius Caesar.”
So what changed?
“I had senior English and had the most awesome teacher ever, and we read … Macbeth,” said Larsche. “I had no idea at that point that I would or could become an actor, but I was challenged with learning the ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’ monologue. I did it in like a night and held onto that for years until I turned about 30, 32 when I actually got into theater.”
In other words, he went from passively reading to actively emoting the words appearing on the page.
Ryan Adair plays Brutus in “Julius Caesar.”
He says it’s the acting that transforms Shakespeare’s language into what audiences can readily understand … when they see the performance onstage.
“A lot of people talk about, oh, Shakespeare is hard to understand,” Adair conceded. “While that is true, perhaps if you're reading it … We study it. We digest it. We dissect it. And then we take the feelings and emotions being conveyed in that scene and present it. So, watching it and reading it are two very, very different things.”
To make “Julius Caesar” even more understandable, Lab Theater has modernized the setting, moving it from ancient Rome to present day, reducing the cast from 27 to 9 actors, shortening the play to a tad over 90 minutes and placing it in the context of a radio show broadcast.
“Alex and Nicki have worked really hard ... our directors have worked hard on abridging it, but keeping the … famous speeches,” Adair noted.
One such speech is Portia’s monologue imploring her husband, Brutus, to share the secret that’s troubling him, namely his conspiracy to murder Caesar.
But it’s more than iconoclastic speeches that render Shakespeare relevant more than 400 years after his death.
Shelley Sanders, who plays Caesar in the Lab production, says it’s the Bard’s insight into human nature and interpersonal relationships.
“Just because people tell you something doesn't mean they have your best interest at heart, which is a fatal flaw that Caesar has because … she likes flatterers, and that ultimately leads to their demise,” Sanders observed. “And that's something you should take to the real world as well. Just because people tell you what you want to hear, that doesn't mean they have your best interest at heart.”
One phenomenon that Shakespeare knew well and explored often is manipulation.
In “Julius Caesar,” Marc Antony manipulates Brutus and his co-conspirators and whips up the masses to avenge Caesar’s murder.
“If you really look at what's going on, it's pretty simple to see that people are easily manipulated, and you really need to know yourself and know your own ideas and standards,” Larsche maintained. “And yeah, don't listen to the media because people are always going to try to influence you to do what they see fit, worship who they … want you to worship. Follow who they want you to follow.”
“Julius Caesar” is onstage at the Laboratory Theater of Florida through April 26.
MORE INFORMATION:
Every modern nation boasts about the great writers who depict and define the national life and character: Victor Hugo for the French, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for the Germans, Leo Tolstoy for the Russians, Herman Melville and Mark Twain for Americans and Shakespeare for the British.
William Shakespeare is widely considered to be the greatest dramatist of all time, with plays that transcend centuries. However, the changing history between these centuries can leave his work too complex for the average student.
Most contemporary exposure to Shakespeare is reduced to awkward readings in high school English classes that make Shakespeare feel impossible to understand. Yet, some of the most critically acclaimed rom coms of our time are adaptations of Shakespeare plays. “10 Things I Hate About You” is “The Taming of the Shrew.” “She’s the Man” is “Twelfth Night.” “High School Musical” is loosely patterned after “Romeo and Juliet.”
This suggests that the universal themes touched on in Shakespeare's plays still matter to young audiences 400 years later, they just need to be seen in a different light.
Shakespeare’s popularity had peaks in the 1890s and 1950s, then took a downward turn before rebounding in the 1980s. His reach is now as wide as ever. “Shakespeare has become a global icon,” Jonathan Bate wrote as the world celebrated his 450th birthday in 2014.
For more, listen/read, “Lab Theater’s ‘Julius Caesar’ will be groundbreaking in cast and setting.”
More on Ryan Adair
Ryan Adair loved Shakespeare as a kid, just not “Julius Caesar.”
“I remember sophomore year reading ‘Julius Caesar,’ and I was really bored by it,” he said. “I didn't really understand it. I felt it was really political as a 15-year-old kid. But I loved ‘Hamlet.’ I thought it was fascinating. Senior year I wrote a paper about him and could easily understand it. Then fast forward to when I was 30 years old. That was the first Shakespeare show I ever did. I played Horatio.”
Noting that there’s a world of difference between reading Shakespeare and watching it performed onstage in an intimate theater setting, Adair encourages people to give the Lab’s production of “Julius Caesar” a chance.
“I think if people sit in a theater and watch a performance of Shakespeare, they’ll one hundred percent understand everything that's happening,” he predicted. “The language is all there. You just have to follow where we're going with it, and that's not hard to do. In fact, it’s our job to make sure that the audience can follow what we're doing.”
Adair anticipates that the play’s modern setting will also aid audiences in understanding the play and appreciating its intrigue. But more than that, he thinks directors Alex Lago and Nykkie Rizley have come up with a clever way of easing audiences into the heart of the action.
“At the beginning, the show begins as a radio drama of sorts,” Adair pointed out. “And then, as we get deeper and deeper into the drama, it comes alive similar to when Dorothy arrives in the land of Oz, and the film goes from black and white to color. That's what the goal here with this production. As we start out, we’re just a troupe of actors reading off scripts. Then the further and deeper we get into the production, it comes alive and the narrative takes over the whole stage. And doing that in 90 minutes, the story is all there. The key characters and the plot points are all there. But it's nice to do it in one setting and not drag it out.”
Ryan Adair is a Lab Theater board member, news manager at Gulf Coast News and three-time Emmy Award-winning television producer (and six-time Emmy nominee) who currently serves as the assistant news director for the local Southwest Florida ABC and NBC network affiliates. He holds a BA in Broadcast Journalism from Columbia College Chicago. During his 20-year career as a TV producer and executive producer has worked around the country for CBS, FOX, ABC, and NBC network affiliates. Originally from the Portland, Maine, area, Adair has been involved in theater since the age of 12, acting in more than two dozen shows in northern New England regional theaters. Since relocating to SWFL in 2017, he has appeared on the Lab stage a handful of times (Paul Sheldon in “Misery” and Ansel in "Killer Joe,” which marked his Lab Theater debut), as well as with other local theater companies. Ryan lives in Fort Myers with his wife, Jen, who is a licensed mental health therapist.
More on Justin Larsche
Justin Larsche’s stage credits include “Grey House” (Lab Theater), Joe in Tracy Letts’ “Killer Joe” (Lab Theater), Jason in Lynn Nottage’s dark comedy “Clyde’s” (Lab Theater), the monster, Caliban, in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” for Lab Theater (a 17th century character that presaged JRR Tolkien’s Smeagol (Gollum), Mark in “The Shadow Box” (New Phoenix Theatre), Sheriff of Nottingham in “Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood” (Theatre Conspiracy at the Alliance for the Arts), lovestruck lawyer Burnette Lloyd in Beth Henley’s Southern Gothic tragi-comedy “Crimes of the Heart,” “Body and Sold,” Count Orsino in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and Larry in Patric Marber’s “Closer” (in which he performed opposite Shelley Sanders for the first time).
Larsche has also gained experience performing in Lab Theater’s 2018 24-Hour Playwriting Project (he was a cast member in Candice Sanzari’s Critics’ Choice winner, “Thanksgiving is for Nutters”), on board the Murder Mystery Dinner Train, and as a member of his own character entertainment company, Heroes and Villains.
Larsche has also appeared in two short films for Godbout Entertainment, "Obsession" in 2019 (which is available on YouTube) and as a Russian mobster named Yuri in 2014 in "The Trade."
More on Shelley Sanders
Shelley Sanders’ acting credits include both dramatic, comedic and musical theater roles, including the role of Petunia in “Clown Bar” (thrice), Sophia in “Sharing the Same Umbrella,” “Eula Mae’s Beauty, Bait & Tackle,” “Farce of Nature” (Off Broadway Palm), Henrietta Leavitt in “The Women Who Mapped the Stars” in the Caloosa Nature Center Planetarium, John Wesley Powell in “Men in Boats,” Amy Lee in the Alliance for the Arts’ outdoor production of “Laundry and Bourbon,” Brooke in the filmed theatrical production of “Realish Housewives of Fort Myers” for Lab Theater (during COVID pandemic), a variety of roles in Ken Ludwig’s “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery,” Columbia in “Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show” (New Phoenix Theatre), the lead in “Marian, or the True Tale of Robin Hood” (Theatre Conspiracy at the Alliance), Minka Lupino in “Murderers,” Marjorie in “Hand to God” (Lab Theater), Marjorie Pinchwife in “The Country Wife” (Theatre Conspiracy at the Alliance), Bitsy Mae Harling in “Sordid Lives” (Lab Theater), Miss Georgia Katherine Chelsea Hartford in “The Taming” (Theatre Conspiracy at the Alliance), “39 Steps” (Cultural Park), Lulu in “Cabaret” (Lab Theater), Cassie in “A Chorus Line” (Creative Theater Workshop) Dinah in “South Pacific” (Cultural Park), Grace Farrell and Lilly St. Regis in “Annie,” “Mona in Chicago” and Fermina in “Man of LaMancha.”
She also played Bianca in ‘The Taming of the Shrew” for College of the Mainland in between Galveston and Houston. It was 1999 and she was still a high school student at the time.
“I got cast in the play because they wanted a younger Bianca,” Sanders explained. “It was great. It was a lot of fun, but very different. A very different show than ‘Julius Caesar,’ for sure.”
And that was the last time she performed Shakespeare.
Until “Julius Caesar,” in which she plays the titular role.
“It's a little harder for me to memorize the lines than it was 25-plus years ago because they're written in a little bit more archaic English,” said Sanders. “Of course, we know Shakespeare, but it's been a really amazing experience.”
Sanders appreciates The Lab’s efforts to streamline and modernize Shakespeare’s text.
“It's a malleable script,” Sanders observed. “You can take a little bit more liberty [with it] than some of the more modern pieces. Modernizing the setting is certainly going to be a little bit more relatable to maybe some younger audiences, but everyone's a younger audience when it comes to Shakespeare because it was written so long ago."
She acknowledged that some would find Shakespeare’s verbiage off-putting.
“But I think they're going to know what's going on because of how this is staged. It makes it pretty clear.”
The rest of the cast
The rest of the cast includes Rivero, Derek Kemp ("The Watcher"), Greg Wojciechowski ("Southern Fried Funeral," "It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play," "Young Frankenstein," "On Golden Pond"), Marja Murawski, Abby Seeley ("Grey House," "The Minutes"), Roslyn Kellogg ("Grey House" and Daniel Sabiston ("Yippee Ki-Yay Merry Christmas A Die Hard Musical Parody," "Save Hamlet," "The Play That Goes Wrong," "The Birds: A Parody").
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
